Axie Infinity: Land Development Update!
Axie Infinity is a grand experiment for a new type of game — one that gives more ownership and voice to its players.
Our community is an integral, driving force within Axie and this update will start the process of engaging you on a more meaningful level when it comes to the creation of the Land system. Our initial thought is to provide a development update on a monthly cadence.
The design and development of our land system is a monumental task. Much of the work that’s been done is related to laying the foundation of Lunacia. This means getting the core building blocks ready so that we can add complexity and advanced interactions on top.
Art
The Axie universe has always been distinguished for our eye-popping & magical art. For many, it’s the art that first attracted us to the Axie community. With this in mind, our art team has been hard at work designing a wide variety of components necessary to make our land dreams come true. They’ve given birth to a wide range of new Chimera, items, and structures that will play a vital role through land.
Our art style is designed to be timeless. We want the Axie universe to persist indefinitely and that meant choosing an art style that would resonate for years to come.
Placing Items & Decorating Plots
Items from the Land Sale can also be used to decorate plots! With an extensive variety of items already released, the ability to customize the visual appearance of land plots is shaping up to be amazing.
The Land Map
We’re also able to render a birds-eye view of the land system, this is a major step in turning the Land map into something tangible that you can relate to. It’ll be very important for players to smoothly and easily view a birds-eye view of Lunacia so they can grasp what’s happening throughout the world and spot new opportunities.
Isometric Axies
The Axies in the land system are isometric, meaning that they can be viewed from multiple angles as they move about their land plots. This was a key stepping stone for bringing Axies to the land system. A lot of work went into upgrading the Axie art for land and we’re delighted to give you a glimpse into our progress!
What We’re Building Now
There is a variety of building blocks necessary for us to develop which will allow us to build the complex land economy and gameplay. We need to balance a variety of factors such as user experience, performance, fun, and of course, the in-game economy!
Collecting & Storing Resources
We know that our landholders are excited to gather resources both on their land and through their adventures in Lunacia. Right now, we’re designing the ability for Axies to collect resources and for those resources to be stored through plot-specific inventories. You may also remember the idea of “Axie backpacks” which we are thinking will play a role in gathering resources outside of plots.
These are the building blocks necessary to unleash an amazing crafting system within Lunacia as well. We’ve been working hard on LUNA and have done some initial math and design on how to integrate it into land. Those findings we’ll save for another day!
Building Structures
Upgrading and improving land by using resources to build structures will be a vital component of land play. We also want players to be able to specialize their plots through different structures and items. Right now, we’re choosing which structures to introduce first. So far, a resource storage unit, a town hall, and a portal that could allow for Axies to travel to dungeons and resource nodes seem likely. Down the road, potion shops, blacksmiths, farms, and fishing structures could allow landholders to specialize their plots in new and exciting ways!
We’d also like to note that we’re discussing how to make management of hundreds/thousands of plots possible. We want Lunacia to be highly social and think a system for whitelisting friends/guildmates to help manage land, while collecting a small management fee of some sort is likely part of the solution.
Chimera Battles & Exploring Lunacia
We know that we need an awesome system for tying Chimera battles with the land system. We’re currently weighing the pros and cons of allowing Chimera to spawn throughout Lunacia. We’d also like to test a variety of ways for players to start a Chimera battle. Will you simply walk up to a Chimera and click on it to start a fight? Or perhaps Chimera will be hidden throughout the map (maybe in tall grass) and surprise Axies as they explore Lunacia. A combination of both mechanisms could also work.
We’re also thinking about how Axies can return to their home plots with resources. Perhaps specialized vehicles can be built to help Axies travel over land?
Map Editor
Our community developers will be excited to hear that we currently have a very early version of a map editor. We envision both the core team and community using this to create experiences on top of the land system that could be accessed by portals within Lunacia. This is the first element within our SDK which will allow users to design their own second layer Axie experiences!
And that brings us to…
Defining Our First Public Release
We want to get something playable into the hands of the community as soon as it makes sense. We also want to make sure that when we let you interact with your land for the first time, it’s a memorable experience.
There are a few key features that we want to have ready before putting a demo out. These include: collecting basic resources, building a few structures, navigating your Axies outside of your plots, and perhaps battling a few Chimera. Our goal is to have those core functionalities ready for internal testing this summer. We will continue to give updates on our progress on these core features and will provide transparency on complications that arise. For example, one complication that has currently cropped up is the ability to render many unique Axies simultaneously on the land system — this is proving more complex than we originally thought.
We will shoot for another update near the end of June. We’ll also be making an announcement regarding our plans for scalability next month. We know that gas has been very high recently. This has caused a lot of pain for our players!
We hope you enjoyed this glimpse into our land system! Make sure to visit the land market if you need some land!
The Axie Infinity Team
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