February AMA Recap: A Steady March Towards Progress
Hey Animalians! It’s that time again for another update from your friendly neighbourhood team right here at Animalia! Recently, on 22nd Feb, we held an AMA session over on our Discord server (which you should totally go join) where we shared a bunch of progress updates and answered community questions.
We’d like to thank everyone who managed to join us, but if you weren’t able to catch the AMA, we got you covered! We’ll be recapping almost everything that was discussed during the session so we can get you up to speed with what’s going with the Animalia team! Note: All the images here are taken from the Miro board we used during the AMA session.
1. 2023 Roadmap
We achieved a bunch in 2022!
- We attended our first IRL event in Malaysia, the M1NTED ConFest where we got to rub shoulders with other folks in the crypto space as well as meeting some Animalia fans along the way.
- Our website and Whitepaper got significant updates
- The Animalia Crown Staking systems went live
- We got incubated by Seedify
- Last but not least, we launched our Private Alpha which allowed our treasured Upsilon members to actually test and play our game, Animalia!
2022 was definitely a wild ride and in 2023, we intend to hit even bigger milestones! As detailed above, in Q1, we’re focusing on Smart Contract integrations and knuckling down on game development, as well as continuing discussions with Seedify, to ensure the developments synergise with the ever evolving tech and community trends, thanks to their experience in launching more than 50 Game-Fi projects in the past years.
This will all be in preparation for us to go all out from Q2 through Q4. Our hope is that we’ll be able to deliver the promised utilities to stakeholders while also holding more testing phases before ultimately readying ourselves for the official release.
We aim to stick to this general roadmap in 2023, and we hope you’ll follow us on this journey!
2. Crown Staking Updates & Precious Gemstones
“Preciousss!” — Gollum, possibly
During the AMA, we shared what Precious Gemstones are and how to get them. Precious Gemstones are refined versions of the baseline Gemstones that are playable cards in Animalia that have game defining effects. These Precious Gemstones are only attainable via the Crown Staking system and will never go on sale anywhere else. Pebbles earned through Crown Staking will be used to exchange for these limited edition Gemstones.
So better get staking, boys and girls!
3. Behind the scenes with Tech Development
We gave the community a little sneak peek behind the curtains to show the gears and wires of Animalia which features our development and tech team.
In late 2022, our development process became fully independent with a 100% in-house team of game developers which allowed us more flexibility and autonomy to implement mechanics and features as we saw fit. At the moment, we’re looking to continue to expand this team, so if you think you’ve got the chops for developing a game, we’re always ready to talk! Hit us up! 😘
At the time of writing this, we’re conducting a server migration to ensure security and minimise malicious attacks, overall providing a more stable development process.
We’re also busy squashing bugs. As we continue to refine and build Animalia, we’re bound to find various aspects of the game that we’d like to polish or fix, so rest assured that the team is hellbent on destroying as many bugs and glitches as humanly possible.
4. Lore Lovers Unite!
Animalia is a world full of quirky characters, exotic locations and rich lore. This was made possible thanks to our resident worldbuilder, Meera, who shared some of the processes involved with cultivating the lore of Animalia. As seen above, the ideation process for the lore is a mighty challenge, ensuring details make sense and plugging any loopholes that might appear.
Alongside building the lore of Animalia, we’ve also established the Animalia world map, indicating the different Landscapes and the various Titan domains.
Our talented writer, Meera, shared that the prologue of the lore has gone through multiple iterations, now sitting at Version 4, we have an external editor currently helping us identify any inconsistencies or missing info. Meera also graciously shared her favourite part of the Prologue which featured one of the Alphas, Doge, sharing a profound line about creation and destruction in the world of Animalia.
To round off the lore section of the AMA, we showed off some comic strip sketches of Sam the Samoyed meeting up with Shib.
5. Gameplay Progress
With the help of our resident gamer and part-time nerd, Kaemon, we’ve made an attempt to standardise our game language. We’ve created special keywords for each gameplay mechanic to hopefully make it easier for players, be it casual or veteran card game players, to understand what a card does at a glance. Featured above is roughly half of the new keywords Kaemon and the team have created.
At the moment, we’re working on creating VFX for over 100+ cards but we wanted to show off just a small fraction of the cards that will be implemented into the full game upon release. The cards featured above are NFT cards that will be obtainable via card packs. To check out their VFX, check out the videos below
Falling Knives VFX
Another gameplay mechanic we introduced to the community was the NFT Tier System which features the Critter and Spell Aura. The NFT Tier System is based off of the different rarity tiers of NFT cards. As detailed above, having two similar cards of different rarity tiers triggers the different aura effects which can bring the player who utilises it a big advantage.
Each rarity tier is indicated by the unique frame, scaling in ornateness as the rarity increases. Aside from rocking the battlefield with power, you’ll also be rocking it with style!
6. Upcoming Releases
To round off the AMA session, we shared updates on a couple upcoming Titans, Nanook and Musk! At the moment of development, we have two playable Titans in the game, Ursa and Toro, as we continue to develop Animalia we aim to bring more Titans to the game to deepen the complexity of gameplay. Nanook and Musk will be the first new additions to the roster.
To briefly cover the background of these upcoming Titans, Nanook is a mighty Polar Bear while Musk is a cantankerous musk ox! The origin of Nanook’s name is deeply rooted in Inuit culture, symbolising the God of the Hunt! Musk’s name, on the other hand, is inspired by the illustrious Elon Musk.
We’re currently designing special abilities for these two Titans that will thematically fit their exotic origins and inspirations. It’ll be exciting to see how players will utilise these abilities once the game is available to the public.
That pretty much covers everything that was discussed during our AMA session! We hope you’re as excited as we are for the future! Until our next update, stay safe out there, Animalians!
