Only two days left and it's New Year all over the world! I'd like this weekly update feel special, since it's the last one for the year 2018.
Let's start with non-original - it all starts with an idea. Why? Well, because it really almost always does.
CryptoTycoon was supposed to be a straight-up clone of GameDevTycoon, Blockchain Tycoon and, basically, every other camp-like tycoon game out there. One of our devs is a heavy tech-geek, so when he pitched me the initial idea the space looked like this:
I could say it was inspiring, but that'd be a big stretch. Mountain big.
Going further these were a few components (GPUs, Motherboard and a GPUs cluster):
And the game-design was just about building a rig, lots of mining components raw specs, mining & trading tokens and that was pretty much it. Not much, huh? Even though the presentation was poor, you can recognize the potential and a nice idea for the game itself. And so thought I.
So after a month passed and with some heavy-lifting of us working day and night, we could bring the CryptoTycoon concept to the public and it certainly looked very different from the initial pitch:
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Don't believe the screenshot, watch the video!
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You could recognize it being graphically inspired by Deux Ex: Human Revolution hacking mini-game. Not a direct copy, but the resemblance is there (big Deus Ex fan here). Mesmerizing music was composed exclusively for us. And the game-design itself changed almost entirely. Follow me to see how exactly we tweaked and revamped it all.
Game Design
We introduced the Tycoons, your playable avatars each with their own special bonus. Then we designed characters-based and common Skill Trees. That added an element of RPG and should deliver more than enough replay-ability even to the most demanding players out there:
Then we introduced the Corporations (groups of Clusters, basically "a group of groups") and then the Alliances. The former added a lot of game content for mid- and high-level gameplay: manufacturing, trading, inventing, working on corp blueprints. And the latter added major competitive gameplay - CryptoTycoon can be a Game Of Thrones a times. That is our MMO/RTS element right there.
Finally, we decided to make the game economics, marketplace and trading overall a transparent (and non-intrusive from our side) experience. For that we needed a blockchain that would store the game states (the game history), be immutable and trustworthy and provide the unparalleled market/rules/game transparency to the players. The blockchain part went far further the immutable ledger, though. The server side code emulates it, the network built to provide a decentralized performance - we went every step further from by-the-book and every inch closer building our ideal MMO game network code.
So, yeah, the initial idea and concept grew pretty... big. Both visually and technically. Both design-wise and logic-wise. It's no longer some indie small-time gig. It's a concept with all the potential to grow itself into one of the greatest games out there.
Honestly, that's a kind of game we just don't have the budget for right now, but a kind of game we so much want to build and enjoy with every one of you. That's why we're running a CryptoTycoon Crowdsale.
Just 2 weeks left till the end of Early Crowd! Make it count. Join at cryptotycoon.to. Let's build this game together!
