Greetings Voyagers!
It’s been quite a while since we’ve last posted so we’re excited to do this larger round-up on what we’ve been working on so far this year. Spoiler alert, be sure to make yourself comfortable as we’ve got a lot to cover as the start of the year has been really productive for us.
VZ Games becomes Vorto Gaming
In February, VZ Games, the studio behind Hash Rush, and the Swedish game publisher Polar Dragons have merged to form a new blockchain gaming studio, Vorto Gaming.
For those of you that are curious, Polar Dragons are an amazing indie studio that consisted of a team that has worked on everything from hit indie games to giant triple-A studios such as Electronic Arts and are firm believers in the emerging blockchain-gaming genre.
You’re probably wondering what this means for Hash Rush, so let us soothe your nerves right away. The original creative team that worked on Hash Rush remains in place and retains creative direction on Hash Rush, but we now have access to a lot more resources, developers, and funding. From now on, Kristaps will be entirely leading the blockchain vision and development, while Nathan is the creative leader for Hash Rush.
For our blockchain community, let us tell you now that RUSH will still be used as the game currency, and you will be able to learn more about this further in this article.
The Vorto Gaming website is live so you can check it out here.
Hash Rush Redesign
As we wrote in our last article back at the end of January, we decided to redesign Hash Rush from the ground up.
With two months of development under our belt, we’re happy to show you what the new version of Hash Rush looks like, so enjoy this preview!
We’ve also got a bonus video for you, a proper development progress montage. As we’re re-designing Hash Rush from bottom to top, we’ve been recording each major milestone so that every so often, we can put them together in a montage video so that we can all see the work and progress in the game. So, without further ado, let’s look at the various stages of Hash Rush from February and March.
To complete the redesign section, we want to write up a small note that the game design for Hash Rush has evolved quite a bit, that is not to say that you will not recognize it when you get round to playing the new version (as you can see from the videos that we’ve shared), but a lot has changed, and we hope for the better.
Our Game Designer is finalizing the fine details of the new game, so once the fine details have been set in stone, we will do a proper deep dive explanation of the game. However, the overview is:
- Planets are much larger, players will be able to preview the full planet, but each planet is now split into multiple regions.
- Players will have to fight and conquer each region to cleanse the planet of the Crystal Scourge.
- The playing arena is now flat instead of over the full planet. This was necessary as almost all of the major bugs in the old version were due to the spherical setting.
- The flat playing arena has allowed us to add in proper elevation (think mountains and canyons).
- Flying units will be added, and water/ship units are being worked on.
- Combat has been much improved, giving greater roles to previously sidelined units such as the Slingshooters and Troggs as the damage types (blunt/pierce/slash) will be massively re-balanced (and even redesigned) to give the damage type much more importance.
- Combat will be further improved with the addition of mages, abilities, and passive abilities.
- And a lot more, but we’ll go into more detail about them in the future!
RUSH Coin
As promised at the beginning of this article, it’s now time for some much-needed news on the blockchain side of Hash Rush, specifically our RUSH Coin.
First things first, we get asked (very often) where our RUSH holders will be able to use their RUSH.
The answer is quite straightforward, as promised in the past, we are creating (now) a dedicated store where players can use their RUSH. However, that is just the start.
We’ve been looking at the supply of RUSH and feel that there is a bit too much, some of which have been minted, some not yet. Our solution to this is two-fold, first, the store will be a RUSH black hole, and second, we’re going to hold a special RUSH burning celebration.
In total, 60 million RUSH will be burnt — we’ll be sending all of it to the 0x0 Ethereum wallet. Why this wallet? Well, this is essentially a black hole wallet as once anything is sent to this wallet, no one will ever be able to access it again. All of this is scheduled to be carried out in June.
What’s more, we will extend this to our community as well as we are creating a special NFT that players can acquire by joining the RUSH burn, all they have to do is send some of their RUSH to the 0x0 wallet when the event starts.
Key Points
- We’ll specify how much RUSH closer to the event.
- The NFT will be made available for this event only, once the event has ended, we’re never releasing this NFT ever again.
Here’s the concept art of the NFT
Kris, in a moment of zen clarity, had this to say:
In a way, us burning RUSH is very symbolic. The long-term members of our community will know about the long periods of uncertainty — almost like a cloud looming over us. However, the light is finally here and this giant RUSH-fueled fire is our way of saying ‘the clouds of uncertainty have finally been lifted!
Interview with Egamers.io
Recently, our new CMO Alexander Benitez, and Community Manager Tenzin Chiodak, were invited to a podcast with Egamers.io.
We urge you to tune in as in this podcast we were able to talk about Hash Rush, the formation of Vorto Gaming, our thoughts on the blockchain-gaming scene, and more!
Be sure to listen in here. If you prefer reading, Egamers have also been kind enough to post the full script as well, so the choice is yours to make.
RUSH Coin in Uniswap
Honestly, this came as a surprise to us. A member of our community has started a pair for ETH — RUSH on Uniswap.
Note: As this was started by the community, we have checked out the token address, and it is the real RUSH Token address, so this is the real deal.
Volume is of-course low for now as this is a community started, but as the news spread, there has been a lot of excitement from our community, with many stating their intention of adding some more RUSH to the pool.
If you are interested in buying or selling your RUSH, check it out here.
For those that want to do their own verification, the RUSH contract address is: https://etherscan.io/token/0xcfcd43d7ee21416a71c2eb9888587d52716fc77a
If you check the pair information at the bottom of the uniswap page, you’ll see that they do indeed match.
So, to the amazing person that started this — whoever you may be — thank you!
And that brings us to the end of our March update! What do you think of this all, are you excited to learn more and even try out the game? If so, keep checking back with us as we’ll be sharing more information soon.
Also, be sure to join our Discord server as this is our main community hub and the team is active there, giving progress updates and sneak peeks at the game.
