Snail Trail: Q2 Summary & Q3 Expectations
Q2 Summary Table of Contents
- Fair mint
- Game Launch
- Quality of Life Improvements & Game Updates
- Twitch Integration
- Spotify Album
Q3 Expectations Table of Contents
- In Game Shop
- Mission Tickets
- Isometric View
- Tournaments
- Laboratory
- Reward Distribution & Economy
- Other Improvements
Fair Mint
Snail Trail had arguably, if not definitively, the fairest mint on Avalanche and possibly across all chains on April 19th & 20th. The first mint day was for whitelist spot holders only. Whitelist spots began late October of 2021 and officially closed at the end of January 2022. The whitelist registration process had no special requirements. All that was needed was to sign up using the Kalao Marketplace website and Discord as an anti-bot measure. This safe guarded anyone from obtaining multiple whitelist spots. Even those who tried to obtain multiple whitelist spots were removed from the wallet list before mint day.
Depending on how early you registered, you either received an Early Snail, Just In Time (JIT) Snail, or Late Snail whitelist spot. Each spot could have minted 6, 3, or 2 snails respectively during the 24 hour window at 1 AVAX each. From the end of January leading up to mint, there were absolutely no whitelist spots given out unless it was done through one of our transparent contests or giveaways. Even team members and investors were given zero special treatment. And oh did they try! We wanted to keep the mint as fair as possible.
The second day, April 20th, was the anti-bot round at 1 AVAX per snail again. In order to limit all wallets to 1 mint, the community had to KYC their wallet through the trusted Avalaunch launchpad website. The wallet list during this round was a combination of wallets from Avalaunch and our whitelist. The third day was meant for the public round, but there was no need because the genesis snail collection sold out in about 2 hours into the anti-bot round! With a combined mint from the whitelist round and anti-bot round, there were 4,901 unique wallets that minted all 7,400 snails.
Game Launch
The game launched on May 11th after a slight delay due to a DDOS attack on our infrastructure. The original server security system was provided by Amazon AWS which is a provenly strong system. Unfortunately the attack was more sophisticated and overloaded the server causing the attacker to freeze the game website. Having the game unplayable at the launch wasn’t an option. The team was forced to delay the launch and upgrade the server security system to Cloudflare. After many lengthy calls, integration, and testing, the game was ready to launch with a stronger defense leaving the attacker in the dust.
The launch was smooth and the eager racers hit the tracks with their snails. After a little less than 24 hours and snails began finishing their first ever placement races, the competitive races were off to a hot start. The first week saw 2,353 unique racers and 11,697 total races.
Quality of Life Improvements & Game Updates
The first game update came on May 13th, two days after launch and one day after competitive races began. The changes included:
- Added the ability to claim your rewards on mobile.
- Your snail in the race list is now highlighted with a purple border.
- Initial mission ticket count increased from 5 to 9.
- Fixed statistics being shown improperly.
- Joining a competitive race now grants one mission ticket which was previously 0.
- The Bronze and Diamond leagues disabled in order for players to have more room to compete with each other. Leagues can be added or removed according to snail population and other data.
- The algorithm that decided each race’s conditions and lengths was made smarter.
The second update came the next day on May 14th:
- The Silver League removed bringing the total league count to two.
- Race dates and times changed to reflect the players timezone.
- Daily Missions cooldowns and the registered bar made visible on mobile.
On May 16th:
- The mission ticket system partially disabled. The system was removed for race entry, but the tickets were left to still be counted in case of the event they needed to be reintroduced.
On May 18th:
- The Daily Mission cooldown reduced from 6 hours to 4 hours.
Next came a hefty batch update on June 9th:
- The race history section was added to each snail’s details page along with mobile support.
- Each race entry pop up now shows the snails that match their adaptation to the race conditions first in the list.
- A snail’s details page is now accessible when clicking on a snail in a race list.
- Multiple marketplace filters improvements and various UI fixes.
- Competitive race entry fees changed from 50, 75, 100, to 50, 100, 200 and races with a 1000 entry fee disabled.
A small update came June 24th:
- The race conditions are now shown on the race entry pop up in the header.
The next batch update came June 30th:
- Twitch integration (roadmap item).
- The top three race trail names from our Twitter naming contest were added.
- The breed status icon on the marketplace cards is now correctly shown correctly for newborns that have their genders selected.
- A specific condition that allowed snails to join two races in a row on daily missions was fixed. With the fix, if a snail tries to enter a race as last, they will not be able to join another one for 150 seconds.
Twitch Integration
Snail Trail now represents Avalanche on Twitch as the only NFT game from the chain on the largest gaming social platform in the world. Sit back and watch the slime-filled races as they’re streamed 24/7 nonstop. Although you can watch the races in the Next to Run tab on our website, this is more significant than the ability to watch races. Twitch is an opportunity to connect and engage with not only our community but the broader gaming community at large. Live events will be streamed with narrators and maybe even some big prizes and high rewards. This sets Snail Trail apart from all other games as we build our brand with a fun and engaging game for the world to see.
Spotify Album
The Snail Trail, Vol. 1 (Original Game Soundtrack) Album is available on the largest music streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, and Soundcloud. These platforms have hundreds of millions of users per day and we’re proud to represent the Avalanche gaming space on them. The album was crafted by our very own sound engineer/artist within the team. This makes Snail Trail the only game on Avalanche with an album. Fully loaded with ten melodious tracks, two named by the community, the album brings a unique touch to the Snail Trail brand. It’s a nice ode to the hard work and attention to detail the team brings to the game.
Q3 Expectations
- In Game Shop
- Mission Tickets
- Isometric View
- Tournaments
- Laboratory
- Reward Distribution & Economy
- Other Improvements
In Game Shop
The Shop is coming to Snail Trail! There will be many items available for purchase using our SLIME token so players can add some cool personalized visuals to their snails. There will also be scrolls for sale that can give players special options such as renaming their snails.
Mission Tickets
An important item that will be sold in the shop are mission tickets. These tickets will be sold in AVAX and will cost the same amount as an average gas fee for transactions on the network. Nine tickets will cost approximately 0.0075 AVAX and proceeds will be used to buyback SLIME. It will always be more beneficial for players to pay the transaction fees through the game for the race so they can earn XP for their snails and level up.
At the beginning of sold mission tickets, there will be a limit on negative tickets at -20. If a snail’s ticket count goes below that number, then its race speed will be much slower. After a few weeks the limit will be hard capped and any snail with a ticket count below -20 will not be able to attend races. This will provide a healthier mission ticket system so we can keep the transaction count low while also being fair to all players.
In the first iteration of the system, players had to enter races as last once they were out of tickets which caused a huge demand for last spots simultaneously. With the Shop feature, basically there will be a window of 20 races per snail until the snail becomes unable to race once its tickets go below zero. During that 20 race window, players ideally should try to enter races as the last athlete to gain XP while paying the fee. However, if somehow a snail can’t find a suitable race they can bring their ticket count back to 0 via shop. Keep in mind that players will be able to buy tickets for snails that only have a negative number of tickets.
Isometric View
The current race view in the game is a 2D view, but now we’re adding a bit more flavor to our animation. Snails will soon have a lot more details and look more like their NFT artwork in the race. Players will happily see their NFTs come to life in the high speed action. Screen grabs, recordings, and live streaming of the races will look a lot better for all social platforms to entice the viewers.
Tournaments
We are introducing a new race mode that will require some additional strategies apart from the current song and dance. Elimination based tournaments are coming to bring players on a racing journey in hopes of leaving victorious. Get ready for a new way to play, with higher stakes and higher prizes!
Laboratory
One of the most anticipated updates of the game: the NFT burning mechanic. With a growing snail population, comes a need to contain the speedy beasts. In the Laboratory players will be able to use their less desired snails to formulate one better snail. Add multiple snails, extract different parts/items from each, and put them together to create a better snail. This is where players become mad scientists in order to gain the crucial yet rewarding competitive advantage of the game. The Laboratory will come when it is necessary relative to the snail population.
Rewards Distribution and Economy
Our SLIME token is distributed with respect to the target emissions chart. At the moment there are 6 races per snail with 60 SLIME reward. If a target emission is not met for the month, the remaining SLIME will roll over and be added for the next month’s distribution. This is why the current racing system is a ratio of 6 races with 60 SLIME per day. However, with the growing population and target emissions decreasing, these values will change. For example, at some point it will be 5–4–3–2 races per day with 60 SLIME reward. After that it will decrease to 1 race per snail per day with a 60 SLIME reward. Further down the road, at some point it will require the forming of snail teams to enter daily missions. To sum it up in simpler terms, if a player does not breed and keeps the same number of snails their share from the reward pool will be smaller as time passes. To not only improve, but to keep the rewards you get it’s best to grow your number of snails which increases the total snail population along with helping new people join the game. Eventually in the future these emissions will end and all the SLIME will be in circulation.
Going forward there will be new mechanics that will require Slime to be used. For example, In Q4 we are planning to introduce Guilds. This new feature will allow a single player to lock a large amount of SLIME (over six figures…so save them up Slime Gang) to create an in-game Guild. Players can also crowdfund the SLIME and lock it. A Guild has several perks with leveling up such as renting, managing snails together, etc.
Other Improvements
There are also several other game mechanics such as new game modes and some integrations (i.e. Core Wallet Integration) that are not public information for a few different reasons. We are planning to implement these as well without delaying our main roadmap items. Who doesn’t like a pleasant surprise?
Wrapping Up
It was an amazing quarter for Snail Trail and we’re aiming to let the good times roll by having another awesome quarter. So many new things are coming to the game and we’re extremely grateful for our community of racers. Time to put our heads down and keep building this beautiful game. As always, Happy Slimin’.
