Hello World. Today is my 10 year crypto anniversary, I started in February 2016 when BTC was around 400$. Ever since I entered I never had any other job other than crypto. I've seen epic highs and depressing lows, I made all the mistakes one can make, I also did some great calls. It was a crazy and messy journey being all in in crypto. I don't think I can go 10 more years like this though, I would surely drop dead considering I'm now in my early 40s.
Now to get to the point of this post, I always wanted to make my own game, something Diablo like but kinda smaller indie developer scope of course. I messed with Unity and had some workable prototype, but very soon I noticed huge impassable walls I couldn't climb just by myself with no prior design experience. Stopped. More crypto volatility came along with more grey hairs.
Skip to an AI era where in few short years AI became many multitudes faster and smarter than any human in coding, and now here I am with the same idea of making my own game by myself and now with the help of newcomer Grok. I wanted to go with no installations, with easy onboarding, with short bursts of fun times, so naturally I ended with Html card game. Splinterlands is by far my favorite card game that represents precisely that so I made my own spin on Splinterlands formula.
So the Idea is that there are many card game clones out there, there was an original and then someone made a clone. For example Hearthstone and then for crypto people very similar Gods Unchained but with their own spin, over the years both games evolved but the core stayed the same. Splinterlands also evolved a lot over the years so this game is a callback to simpler times, now with my own spin on the formula, its the same but very different game.
I won't go into details too much but thematically I went with Steampunk and Lovecraft mixed with fantasy creatures. Remember Arcanum (that was my favorite game, probably still is), card design follows that theme, it is very steampunk centric. AI today is extremely potent in making outerworldly images so it fits perfectly with the theme.
It took me less than one month to make the working pre alpha on my website, everything what you expect from a card game is there. For now I have 33 cards with abilities designed and 6 heroes, I have pack openings, card collection and tactical battles. What is different is that all heroes will always be playable, they do not come with packs, I always felt collecting heroes and leveling them adds complexity and cuts card usage in Splinterlands. Like I said I want a simpler game and that is just one of the examples for now.
Right now Im fighting with battle animations, it is not easy to get to Splinterlands polish Ill tell you that right now, but things are chugging along, it is getting there. I have a lot of fun making this game, AI is insanely capable, I dont' know, getting this far by myself would take many months, but in less than one month I have a decent game. I hope to bring it to blockchain one day, haven't decided on which one yet. Anyone have any opinions on this? Let me know.