Interlude play-to-earn: introducing the Harvest Protocol

A small step for Interlude, but a giant leap for the world of decentralized gaming and game-fi

Designing our play-to-earn system

Interlude is an experimental project and it is evolving almost on a weekly basis. For example the initial vision as described in our whitepaper didn’t involve staking or proportional rewards at all, whereas these concepts are now integral part of the project. With this in mind, we started working on our permanent play-to-earn game with the idea of integrating different earning mechanisms. In particular, it was always in our plan to build on the basis of the Scavenger Hunt Protocol to create something more general and multi-purpose. These new ideas led us to bring some big changes to the protocol, and after some times we realized renaming it would make things clearer. So here it is: after several months of work, we’re happy to introduce the Harvest Protocol!

What is it?

In essence the Harvest Protocol is a generalization of the Scavenger Hunt Protocol. Whereas the Scavenger Hunt only awards an ISH reward for a specific, boolean action (finding a key) in a specific setting (a scavenger hunt with a series of keys to find), the Harvest Protocol is able to quantify any in-game action and allocate to it an ISH reward. As a result it is now possible for example to create a zombie shooter, where each zombie killed yields a given amount of ISH; or maybe, in addition, where each hit you receive also has an ISH price; or even, where each bullet also has a cost in ISH. All these variations are decided by the game developer — the Harvest Protocol seamlessly and securely transposes them into an equivalent ISH reward. This is simpler and more natural for both players — who can now play any type of games, including “legacy” scavenger hunts but not only — and developers, who have more freedom in the type of game they can bring.

The Harvest Protocol is able to quantify any in-game action and reward it with a determined ISH amount

How to play

The user interface of the Harvest Protocol is similar to that of the scavenger hunts. To play you first need to start a session on our web front-end, before launching the game. Here are the detailed steps:

1. Launch our web app. In the “Harvest” tab you will see a list of games displayed.

2. Select the game you want to play, download it.

3) Go to the “Start session” tab. Select the amount you want to stake. This is a fee paid in TSH, that will act as a multiplier for the ISH earning during the session. The more TSH you spend the more ISH you will be able to earn.
The interface displays the average and max ISH earning for the equivalent amount of TSH paid as fee. Start the session by validating the Metamask transaction. Once the session is started, the “Play” tab is displayed automatically with a timer. The duration varies depending on the game.

4) Once the session is started you’ll be able to launch the game. Enter your BSC wallet (the same wallet you used to start the session), click ENTER and the game will launch automatically.

5) Play and try to harvest as much ISH as possible. Earning ISH is done in a different way for each game: it can be shooting enemies, picking up objects, or any other type of in-game action. At any moment, you can get a receipt for the ISH you’ve earned so far by pressing I. The receipt will be automatically copied to your clipboard.

6) Once you’re satisfied by the amount of ISH you’ve earned, or if you don’t have time anymore, paste the receipt in the interface and validate the session. Your ISH will be transfered automatically.

Rules & rewards

The Harvest protocol is currently in a very early stage and will certainly be modified and improved in subsequent versions.

The most important characteristic of the protocol at this stage, is that playing requires paying a fee in TSH. The fee is set by the player before starting a session, and will dictate the maximal amount of ISH that can be earned during this session. This has two important consequences:

• only investors can play
• rewards are proportional to the amount of ISH staked, which fits with our new guiding principles developed in the previous article.

This aspect makes the protocol completely fair and secure, and more democratic: players can play with the amount they feel comfortable with.

In the current version each game has the following characteristics:

• session duration: displayed in the timer while playing. This is a hard limit enforced in the smart contract. If the player doesn’t validate the session in time the fee in TSH is lost.
• reward rate: displayed in the game description. This is the specific amount of ISH earned for each TSH paid in fee. The reward rate of each game is set in function of the game’s difficulty: more difficult and risky games will have a higher reward rate. The game specific reward rate is multiplied by a global coefficient for all games, that will certainly change in the future.
• min fee: respectively the minimal amount of TSH that can be paid to play this game

The reward is 100% unlocked, and transferred directly to the player’s wallet. This is something we discussed a lot, but for several reasons we think it’s better this way.

What’s next?

• We are finalizing the Harvest Protocol, and have ported several of our game to it already. Launch of the beta is planned for this week
• Beta will be restricted by whitelist. To get on the whitelist contact us on our Telegram group
• We will create a Telegram group specially for beta testing and feedback. This group will be reserved to beta testers primarily, but anyone with suggestions or ideas, or even simply who wants to get closer to the project’s development is welcome!
• Our next Scavenger Hunt will be announced soon.

As always, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date, and to join our Telegram to discuss the project or ask questions.