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Author: FaultProofBen

Gm and Happy New Year!

I hope you’ve all had a great past few weeks.

I certainly did, spending time with friends and touching some much-needed grass (And asteroid in Primodium, of course).

I took a bit of a breather during the holiday season, but now I’m back, rejuvenated, and ready to get into the swing of things again.

Before diving into today’s piece, I have a few WASD housekeeping items that I wanted to share with you all as we begin 2024:

1. Articles will now be published on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays

2. Our pieces will primarily be released on Base

As I teased last year (AKA on Friday), January was set to be a big month for onchain games.

There are numerous new launches, updates, events, and playtests slated for the next 30 days.

Today, I’ll give you a primer on what’s in store by breaking down the five releases I’m most excited for.

It’s great to be back…now let’s get to it!

Sky Strife is a turn-based real-time strategy (RTS) game built in MUD by Lattice.

In Sky Strife, you’ll compete in 2-4-player PVP matches, aiming to destroy other players' bases while defending your own from attack.

Sky Strife is set to begin its next persistent playtest (Season 0.1), which will run from January 8-30 on the Redstone Holesky testnet.

Although details of the season’s structure have yet to be formally released, it’s likely that, as with the prior one, the Lattice team will create free-to-play matches multiple times per day during this period.

What we do know for certain, however, is that players in said matches will be able to earn Orbs (🔮).

🔮 are an ERC-20 token that is emitted as a reward for matches, and can be used to create games in between the free ones.

Additionally, users will be able to mint new Season Pass NFTs, which give its holders access to exclusive matches, maps, and the ability to spin up whitelisted games.

I had a ton of fun with Sky Strife Season 0 – So I can’t wait for 0.1.

Be sure to also stay tuned for more details on the next season of World Sky League, our onchain Sky Strife esports league that will be returning in Season 0.1!

Dark Forest Arena is a community event for Dark Forest hosted by dfDAO on Gnosis Chain.

Dark Forest is an MMO where players compete for dominance over a zk-SNARK-shrouded galaxy by conquering planets, scoring points, and climbing the ranks of the in-game leaderboard.

This latest competition to come out of Dark Forest Arena is a “speed round,” where players aim to capture a target planet in the shortest amount of time possible.

The event, which began on December 31, will run for 2 weeks and see the players with the highest scores (i.e., quickest capture times) earn prizes.

I think this is a nice way to revive interest in Dark Forest, and expose players who were not around during its heyday (like myself) to the game.

I haven’t done a serious run yet, and while I almost certainly will not win, I’m eager to throw my hat in the ring (Or should I say, arena) nonetheless.

Tarochi is an onchain RPG developed by Paima Studios using the Paima Engine on XAI.

The game shares similarities to Pokemon, as players can explore, complete quests, battle, and capture monsters.

Paima is set to host a playtest for the latest version of the game (Season 1) “sometime in January.”

This event will be open to members of their Discord server, so you should hop in there if you haven’t already.

Season 1 is set to introduce several new features, including PVP battles (Combat is currently PVE) and a tradable gold currency.

In addition, players will have the ability to trade their game state with one another.

Overall, I’m very excited for Season 1 and to try out these new features.

I think the introduction of PVP will make battles more engaging, and I’m also curious to see how the market for players' states emerges.

Force Prime Heroes is a fantasy game built by Force Prime using Dojo and Unity.

Created during the recent Dojo Holiday Game Jam hackathon, Heroes is set in the land of Arcanus, where players are tasked with defeating a creature known as “The Bone Dragon.”

To do so, they’ll collect chests and engage in PVE combat by deploying combinations of five different types of creatures known as units.

Although available to play on Windows, Force Prime Heroes is slated for a web release at some point in the “next several days.”

The team will also hold a tournament later this month, where players can compete to earn prizes and clout.

I’m not a Windows user, so I haven’t been able to try out Heroes.

Regardless, I’m hyped for the upcoming release, tournament, and to get my hands on the game for the first time.

Aether Sands is an open-world game developed by k0 Labs using MUD.

Aether Sands is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where you’ll need to rebuild civilization by planting and defending a tree known as a Temple.

The way you’ll do so is by extracting and managing resources like Water, and using machines known as Harvesters.

Aether Sands held their first public playtest last month and is set to kick off their second in mid-January.

We don’t have many details on the structure of this event, though the first one lasted about 24 hours.

I’m stoked to try out Aether Sands based on what I’ve seen of the game.

It reminds me a bit of Primodium, and the open-world genre is one of my favorites in offchain gaming.

As you can see, January is shaping up to be an exciting, action-packed month for us onchain gamers.

We have new releases from Sky Strife, Tarochi, Force Prime Heroes, and Aether Sands set to drop, while Dark Forest arena is live and playable today!

(Yes, I’m counting it as a January release.)

Furthermore, this is just the tip of the iceberg - There will almost certainly be many other launches over the coming weeks.

This level of activity is not only fun for all of us, but a giga-bullish sign for the future of the space.

We already have this many playtests, and many teams are still returning from the holidays.

I can only imagine what things will look like when everyone is fully back in pocket.

All in all, if this opening month is any indication…it’s going to be a massive year for onchain gaming.

Get ready.

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