WASDThe Ultimate Guide to Arbitrum's Onchain Gaming Ecosystem
Author: FaultProofBen Gm! Last week, we covered some of the L2 stacks for building onchain games like World Engine, Keystone, Paima and AltLayer. We’ve also spent plenty of time discussing other ecosystems here on WASD like Starknet, and the MUD games built on various OP Stack L2s. If you are an L2 nerd (like myself) you may notice that there’s one glaring omission from this list: Arbitrum. Arbitrum is mostly known for having the largest L2 DeFi ecosystem, and a big Web 2.5 gaming (Games with...
WASDThe Ultimate Guide to Base's Onchain Gaming Ecosystem
🏆 Collectooor Of The Week:Before we begin, I want to give a shoutout to ddxdxd for collecting The State of Funding for Onchain Games and The Future of the MUD Ecosystem last week! Thank you for your support :) As always, you can collect this (and every WASD article) by obliterating the mint button above! ☝️☝️ If you do, you’ll gain access to the WASD Collectooor Telegram chat and earn the chance to be featured as the “Collectooor of the Week” at the top of each Tuesday piece!Author: 0xAkina ...
WASDThe Ultimate Guide to the Realms Ecosystem: Part 2
Gm! About a month ago, I began our exploration of the Realms ecosystem in “The Ultimate Guide to the Realms Ecosystem: Part 1.” If you’re a loyal WASD reader, you may have noticed that Part 2 has yet to be released. (Rugged!) I’m happy to say that changes today, thanks to the legendary 0xAkina! In Part 1, I focused on the history, vision, and entities operating in the Realms ecosystem. I also shared my thoughts on one of its first-party games, Loot Survivor. As promised, in Part 2, Akina will...
Your home for news, takes, alpha, and research for onchain games and autonomous worlds! By: FaultProofBen
WASDThe Ultimate Guide to Arbitrum's Onchain Gaming Ecosystem
Author: FaultProofBen Gm! Last week, we covered some of the L2 stacks for building onchain games like World Engine, Keystone, Paima and AltLayer. We’ve also spent plenty of time discussing other ecosystems here on WASD like Starknet, and the MUD games built on various OP Stack L2s. If you are an L2 nerd (like myself) you may notice that there’s one glaring omission from this list: Arbitrum. Arbitrum is mostly known for having the largest L2 DeFi ecosystem, and a big Web 2.5 gaming (Games with...
WASDThe Ultimate Guide to Base's Onchain Gaming Ecosystem
🏆 Collectooor Of The Week:Before we begin, I want to give a shoutout to ddxdxd for collecting The State of Funding for Onchain Games and The Future of the MUD Ecosystem last week! Thank you for your support :) As always, you can collect this (and every WASD article) by obliterating the mint button above! ☝️☝️ If you do, you’ll gain access to the WASD Collectooor Telegram chat and earn the chance to be featured as the “Collectooor of the Week” at the top of each Tuesday piece!Author: 0xAkina ...
WASDThe Ultimate Guide to the Realms Ecosystem: Part 2
Gm! About a month ago, I began our exploration of the Realms ecosystem in “The Ultimate Guide to the Realms Ecosystem: Part 1.” If you’re a loyal WASD reader, you may have noticed that Part 2 has yet to be released. (Rugged!) I’m happy to say that changes today, thanks to the legendary 0xAkina! In Part 1, I focused on the history, vision, and entities operating in the Realms ecosystem. I also shared my thoughts on one of its first-party games, Loot Survivor. As promised, in Part 2, Akina will...
Your home for news, takes, alpha, and research for onchain games and autonomous worlds! By: FaultProofBen
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Subscribe to WASD
Subscribe to WASD
>600 subscribers
>600 subscribers
Author: FaultProofBen
Gm, and welcome to The WASD Weekly!
The momentum in the onchain gaming space is only accelerating as we approach the holiday season.
This week was filled with another slate of new launches, playtests, and announcements from titles like Dark Frontier, Project Awakening, Doomsday, Merlin’s Gambit, and Aether Sands.
I think this is an incredibly bullish sign.
While I expect things to slow as we get closer to the actual holidays, I think this is a preview of what 2024 will look for onchain gaming.
Aside from trying to keep tabs on all the news, I also spent much of my week helping coordinate World Sky League, an onchain esports league in Sky Strife launched by WASD, ggQuest, and [WE].
Our first matches are in the books, and we’re rolling towards our playoffs that’ll be streamed on Twitch and X on December 14.
The league been quite the undertaking, but a ton of fun. I’ll share my experience helping manage it on Monday in Onchain Lore VIII.
Now, without further ado, here’s:
A primer on the week’s news
My picks for three games to play over the weekend
A list of upcoming playtests, opportunities, and events
A recap of WASD content & mints
An overview and my thoughts on Dark Frontier (THE GAME SPOTLIGHT IS SO BACK)
And of course…
…The S-tier meme of the week!!!
The hottest news from the last week in onchain gaming and autonomous worlds.
Three onchain games to try out for yourself this weekend.
Upcoming events from around the onchain gaming ecosystem.
prize & NFT trophy!
Catch up on WASD content and mints from the past week.
The best non-WASD Content from friends in the community.
Read: What We’re Learning from Extending Downstream with Composable Gameplay and Secrets - Baz
Dark Frontier is an MMORTS.
An independent reboot of the OG onchain game Dark Forest, in Dark Frontier players compete against one another in a shared galaxy to capture planets and reach the top of the in-game leaderboard.
To do so, players will search for new planets using the “explorer” and capture them using energy, a resource within the game that players can transfer between planets.
Each planet has a different amount of energy and attributes like defense, range (how far it can send energy), and fill time (how long it takes to refill its energy).
Under the hood, Dark Frontier is built by Argus Labs using World Engine.
World Engine is a framework for creating sharded, EVM-compatible L2s optimized for hosting high-throughput onchain games. The network also utilizes Celestia as its data availability layer to further boost scalability.
This round of Dark Frontier launched on December 5 and is set to run until December 19.
At its conclusion, Argus will distribute $7500 in prizes to the “top scoring players” over this period.
I never played the original Dark Forest, so Dark Frontier was my first experience with its game mechanics.
I played the game for a few hours shortly after it launched and had a lot of fun with it, as the gameplay is engaging and easy to get started with.
However, I underestimated the time commitment needed to play, as I spent a couple of days between playing in which time all of my planets had been captured (RIP).
Despite this, I could definitely see why the OG Dark Forest became so popular.
When playing Dark Frontier, I was also curious to assess the in-prod performance of World Engine.
So far, I like what I’ve seen.
The game runs smoothly, and the use of “Persona,” an account abstraction system that enables signature-free gameplay, also provides a nice boost to UX.
However, I do think the rollout of “Game Keys,” a code that gives you access to the game, could have been improved.
I received mine 6 hours after launch, putting me at a theoretical disadvantage to other players, and I know of many who received their keys even later.
Overall, I think Dark Frontier is a nice demonstration of what World Engine is capable of.
I’m very excited to see what else is built with it, whether the Argus team continues to run rounds, and how the broader ecosystem developers from here!
A recreation of a classic in Sky Strife.
Thanks for reading!
If you liked this piece, you can collect it at the top of the page. It’s free!
After you do, hop in our WASD Collectooor Telegram chat to meet other collectors, enthusiasts, players, and degens!
Finally, to stay current on all things WASD, subscribe below, follow us on Twitter, and head over to our WASD Republic Discord server!
Have a great weekend, and see you all on Monday!
Author: FaultProofBen
Gm, and welcome to The WASD Weekly!
The momentum in the onchain gaming space is only accelerating as we approach the holiday season.
This week was filled with another slate of new launches, playtests, and announcements from titles like Dark Frontier, Project Awakening, Doomsday, Merlin’s Gambit, and Aether Sands.
I think this is an incredibly bullish sign.
While I expect things to slow as we get closer to the actual holidays, I think this is a preview of what 2024 will look for onchain gaming.
Aside from trying to keep tabs on all the news, I also spent much of my week helping coordinate World Sky League, an onchain esports league in Sky Strife launched by WASD, ggQuest, and [WE].
Our first matches are in the books, and we’re rolling towards our playoffs that’ll be streamed on Twitch and X on December 14.
The league been quite the undertaking, but a ton of fun. I’ll share my experience helping manage it on Monday in Onchain Lore VIII.
Now, without further ado, here’s:
A primer on the week’s news
My picks for three games to play over the weekend
A list of upcoming playtests, opportunities, and events
A recap of WASD content & mints
An overview and my thoughts on Dark Frontier (THE GAME SPOTLIGHT IS SO BACK)
And of course…
…The S-tier meme of the week!!!
The hottest news from the last week in onchain gaming and autonomous worlds.
Three onchain games to try out for yourself this weekend.
Upcoming events from around the onchain gaming ecosystem.
prize & NFT trophy!
Catch up on WASD content and mints from the past week.
The best non-WASD Content from friends in the community.
Read: What We’re Learning from Extending Downstream with Composable Gameplay and Secrets - Baz
Dark Frontier is an MMORTS.
An independent reboot of the OG onchain game Dark Forest, in Dark Frontier players compete against one another in a shared galaxy to capture planets and reach the top of the in-game leaderboard.
To do so, players will search for new planets using the “explorer” and capture them using energy, a resource within the game that players can transfer between planets.
Each planet has a different amount of energy and attributes like defense, range (how far it can send energy), and fill time (how long it takes to refill its energy).
Under the hood, Dark Frontier is built by Argus Labs using World Engine.
World Engine is a framework for creating sharded, EVM-compatible L2s optimized for hosting high-throughput onchain games. The network also utilizes Celestia as its data availability layer to further boost scalability.
This round of Dark Frontier launched on December 5 and is set to run until December 19.
At its conclusion, Argus will distribute $7500 in prizes to the “top scoring players” over this period.
I never played the original Dark Forest, so Dark Frontier was my first experience with its game mechanics.
I played the game for a few hours shortly after it launched and had a lot of fun with it, as the gameplay is engaging and easy to get started with.
However, I underestimated the time commitment needed to play, as I spent a couple of days between playing in which time all of my planets had been captured (RIP).
Despite this, I could definitely see why the OG Dark Forest became so popular.
When playing Dark Frontier, I was also curious to assess the in-prod performance of World Engine.
So far, I like what I’ve seen.
The game runs smoothly, and the use of “Persona,” an account abstraction system that enables signature-free gameplay, also provides a nice boost to UX.
However, I do think the rollout of “Game Keys,” a code that gives you access to the game, could have been improved.
I received mine 6 hours after launch, putting me at a theoretical disadvantage to other players, and I know of many who received their keys even later.
Overall, I think Dark Frontier is a nice demonstration of what World Engine is capable of.
I’m very excited to see what else is built with it, whether the Argus team continues to run rounds, and how the broader ecosystem developers from here!
A recreation of a classic in Sky Strife.
Thanks for reading!
If you liked this piece, you can collect it at the top of the page. It’s free!
After you do, hop in our WASD Collectooor Telegram chat to meet other collectors, enthusiasts, players, and degens!
Finally, to stay current on all things WASD, subscribe below, follow us on Twitter, and head over to our WASD Republic Discord server!
Have a great weekend, and see you all on Monday!
Details in the thread
(1/5)
Details in the thread
(1/5)
No activity yet