Realms of Arkovia has been on my radar for a while, and I was looking forward to the alpha which launched today. For those of you who may not be familiar with the project, Realms of Arkovia is a fantasy RPG dungeon crawling NFT game leveraging the WAX blockchain.
The views expressed in this review article are solely based on independent observations and research conducted by the author. The author has not received any sponsorship or payment from Realms of Arkovia in exchange for writing this article, and the opinions formed are independent of any external influence. Nothing contained within this article should be considered financial or investment advice, please do your own due diligence and research.
Two things about this project immediately stood out - the art and the concept. I enjoy a good dungeon crawler and it's a hard itch to scratch just right. In the months leading up this alpha, the team has been publishing articles on their blog and had two major drops - Arcane and Destruction sets, with the Nature set coming at a later date.
The art style struck me as lighthearted and whimsical (Pail Pauldrons!) - vibrant colors with a handdrawn/cartoon look and feel.
From a gameplay perspective, it's not as much of a true dungeon crawler as I'd hoped. It's a semi passive implementation of the idea, where a player can set a "loadout" consisting of a Hero and various gear to enter the dungeon.
While this loadout mechanic looks similar to other "staking" systems on WAX, one nicer aspect is this requires only signing a transaction related to the NFT, not transferring it (it stays in the wallet currently during play). Once in the dungeon, gameplay takes on a stats and timer based "press your luck mechanic" with encounters.
Depending on the hero's level and power, combined with the gear power, the encounter is resolved. If successful, the player has the option to press onward or exit the dungeon with a chance for NFT based loot.
This "push your luck" mechanic is interesting as it allows the player to evaluate the risk and reward at each step of the dungeon, rather than automatically progressing and exiting with as much loot as possible. If a player pushes too hard, the hero dies without loot and is forced to sit out a 12 hour cooldown. Having multiple heroes on hand might be a good way to help mitigate this.
The game's native tokens, Arkovian Coins, are also able to be earned. While not currently tradeable, there are plans to enable trading on Alcor and staking to earn additional power boosts. Also planned for the future is the Nature drop which will be another round of heroes and gear, as well as expanding the dungeon floors available and the Infinite dungeon system!
While there are only 10 floors to explore currently, the game's mechanics and art have me interested to see what else is coming in the future.
To celebrate the alpha, comment with your WAX wallet address and what your favorite hero within the game is and why (a list can be gleamed from the templates). Two random comments will win a common hero for use within the game. This will run for approximately 24 hours. Good luck!
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