Author: FaultProofBen
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If you’re a longtime WASD reader or a diehard onchain gamer, you’ve probably heard of Loot Survivor, a rougelike survival game developed by Bibliotheca DAO on Starknet.
However, what you may not know is that this is just the tip of the iceberg, as both the game and the entity behind it are cogs in a larger machine: Realms.World.
Realms represents not just siloed onchain games, but an interconnected ecosystem of them across Starknet and its Layer 3’s (Layer 2’s that settle to another Layer 2).
It’s an incredibly ambitious vision - And today we’ll start to get a sense of it.
Mapping out the entirety of the Realms ecosystem in a single piece would make for a very long read.
(Yes, there’s my obligatory intro pun).
So, given that I have the attention span of a flea, I decided to split this Ultimate Guide into two parts.
In this piece (Part 1) we’ll discuss:
The project’s history
The two main entities stewarding the Realms ecosystem
An overview and my thoughts on it’s first mainnet game, Loot Survivor
Part 2 (Released next week) will be a bit more degen focused, as we’ll explore:
Eternum
The ecosystem’s tokens and NFTs
Potential headwinds, tailwinds and whether or not I’m bullish Realms
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Now…let’s get to it!
Realms first launched in August 2021 as a derivative of the text-based NFT collection, Loot.
The project’s first release was its namesake Realms NFT collection, a set of 8000 (One for every Loot NFT) digital domains that minted for 0.03 ETH a piece.
Initially, these NFTs were meant to be used within an Ethereum L1-based, onchain strategy game known as Realms: Eternum.
However, due to development challenges like high data storage costs, slow sync times, and the difficulty of maintaining a custom indexer, Bibliotheca DAO (The DAO that stewards development of the Realms ecosystem) decided to pivot and build Eternum on Starknet.
In the bear market (Which *hopefully* is over now) that followed the mint, Realms demonstrated that it was far more than a Loot offshoot by establishing itself as a leading onchain gaming project.
In addition to Eternum, a second game, the aforementioned Loot Survivor was developed and released on testnet in July 2023, and mainnet via a pre-release earlier this month.
Bibliotheca DAO also helped further the broader development of onchain gaming on Starknet by contributing to the creation of Dojo.
Dojo is an “engine,” or framework that makes it easier to build onchain games using Cairo.
Finally, there have been significant moves made to expand the Realms ecosystem beyond its two first-party games.
This includes the September launch of Frontius House and subsequent distribution of 1,000,000 $LORDS to 10 projects building in the ecosystem via the Genesis Grants program (More on this later).
Now that we have some context on its history, let’s take a look at the two main entities within the Realms ecosystem.
You can think of Bibliotheca DAO as the “Ethereum Foundation of Realms” as they are the entity responsible for the development of its two first-party games (The aforementioned Loot Survivor and Eternum), and help set the strategic direction of the ecosystem.
The DAO is governed by the $LORDS token, the native token of Realms that we’ll take a closer look at in Part 2.
Currently, Bibliotheca DAO uses Snapshot for offchain governance.
However, the DAO plans to move this process fully onchain and implement a vote-escrow (ve) system, where $LORDS holders will be able to lock their tokens for the right to participate in governance and direct emissions to the liquidity pools for different assets in the ecosystem.
A secondary organization that’s recently sprouted up within Realms is Frontius House.
Frontius House is overseen by Bibliotheca DAO (i.e. $LORDS holders).
It’s responsible for helping grow the scope of the project beyond Loot Survivor and Eternum by allocating DAO resources to third-party projects looking to build in the ecosystem.
This can include games, infrastructure, educational resources, and more.
As previously mentioned, to start this process, Frontius House held its first round of Genesis Grants, distributing 1,000,000 LORDS (~$90K) to ten projects selected via a community vote.
These projects are:
Arcane Assembler: A spell-crafting game that will utilize a play-2-die mechanism.
Loot Royale: A PVP battle royale game built by BladeDAO.
Rising Revenant: An exploration game where players build outposts and try to win a jackpot prize.
Risk of the Realms: An onchain adaption of the board game Risk set in the Realms universe and built using Dojo.
Call The Banners: A social engagement game where players form teams, attack, and hunt for treasure.
Crypts and Caverns: A generative, onchain map for Lootverse NFTs.
Kist: A project aiming to create a framework for building hackathon projects in the Realms ecosystem.
Loot Herald: A media arm aiming to produce content about the Realms ecosystem.
Instaswap: An AMM for swapping ERC-1155 tokens on Starknet.
Frontius House is currently holding a second round of Genesis Grants, with $LORDS holders voting to distribute another 1,000,000 tokens to ten additional projects.
So far, more than 25 projects have applied.
Now that we have an understanding of the history of and organization’s within Realms, let’s look at the first of the ecosystems first-party games: Loot Survivor.
Loot Survivor is a rougelike game where your objective (as the name suggests) is to survive in a post-apocalyptic world for as long as possible.
To do so, you assume the role of an adventure and venture into what’s known as the mist.
When you enter the mist, you’ll either emerge unscathed or encounter a monster.
Monsters, unsurprisingly, are the literal bane of your existence, as they want to defeat, kill, and eliminate you from the game.
There are 75 different types of monsters, and upon facing one, you’ll be presented with two choices:
Attempt to flee and potentially avoid taking damage
Fight and risk losing health or dying
If you select Option 2 and kill a monster, you’ll earn XP and gold.
Both can help prolong your survival, as they allow you to upgrade one of your adventurer's six attributes (pictured below) and purchase items or potions, respectively.
Loot Survivor is currently playable on testnet and mainnet, albeit on the latter in a “pre-release” or limited version of the game.
While the game is free on testnet, to play a round of Loot Survivor on mainnet, you’ll have to pony up 25 $LORDS, or about $2-2.5 at current prices.
A portion of these $LORDS tokens are then redistributed as rewards to the Top 3 players (i.e. those who survived the longest with the highest score) on the game’s leaderboard.
This mechanism is known as “Play-To-Die” (P2D).
Despite being released on mainnet less than a week ago, Loot Survivor has already seen significant traction with over 700 games and north of 100 hours of playtime.
The game’s contracts are also in the Top-5 on all of Starknet by gas consumption.
Currently, Bibliotheca DAO is hosting its second-ever Loot Survivior tournament, where players can earn $2K in $LORDS prizes and the chance to win a Golden Ticket NFT, a pass that entitles holders to one free mainnet game per day in perpetutity.
Overall, I’ve enjoyed Loot Survivor and think its gameplay is a lot of fun.
I’m a big fan of the strategy aspects of the game, as there are a ton of different ways to build out your adventurer.
For example, you can be really aggressive by trying to merc every monster you see.
Or, you take the opposite approach and attempt to flee during every encounter.
However, as in many aspects of life, the best approach is probably to strike a balance somewhere in between.
There’s also numerous ways in which you can allocate XP and gold to carry out your gameplan, such as optimizing for brute force by loading up on strength or prioritizing mobility by level up your charisma.
I think this strategic depth helps make the game more fun and adds to its replay value, as each session will be different from the previous one.
I also really enjoy the aesthetics of the game, as I love the design of monsters, the color scheme, and the score.
Furthermore, Loot Survivor’s UX has improved dramatically over the past several months following the implementation of Arcade Accounts, which are burner wallets that enable signature-free gameplay.
With that said, I don’t think Loot Survivor is a finished product, as I feel there’s room for improvement when it comes to both gameplay and UX.
For starters, I think encounters could be more engaging.
Right now, during an encounter, you simply select from the “attack” or “flee” options, and wait for your transaction to confirm to see the outcome.
I would love to see the team add some animations or graphics to make this wait more suspenseful and visually stimulating.
When it comes to UX, my biggest gripe is around wait times.
Before you can play a game of Loot Survivor on mainnet, you have to wait a certain number of block confirmations.
Although this is being done as a bot prevention measure, I found it be frustrating, as I had to wait over 6 minutes before being able to start.
In addition, there’s also a delay penalty if you wait too long (About 6-7 minutes) between entering the mist.
While I understand the desire to mitigate bots, I think this is similarly frustrating, as you are essentially forced to complete a game (which could take 30 minutes or more) in one session.
As we can see, Realms is an incredibly ambitious project.
The ecosystem is made up not just of Loot Survivor (which I’m a fan of) but several organizations and now a number of new games.
I’m very excited to continue to follow its progression.
And cover it some more next week in Part 2 ;)
Thanks for reading!
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