This post is a short overview of what Surgent gaming achieved till now, as the public Alpha release of their game Astral Wars is around the corner.
For me one of the big things coming up on Hive is the Public Alpha release of the card game Astral Wars. It resembles games like Heartstone and MTG, but is on the Hive blockchain (though it will be available for Web2 gamers as well) and the dev work is moving forward quite rapidly.
Astral Wars - What and Why?
The closed alpha was already playable, and I played it for months and it kept me excited. I still play a few round against the AI now and then, as currently the game launcher is not available online to play against other players. Here is some gameplay shared by 
What are the things that make me look out for Astral Wars and the studio Surgent Gaming:
- The gameplay was a lot of fun. We played for hours, did multiple tournaments in the closed pre-alpha game already and the small community simply wants mooore
- In the game Astral Revelations (also developed by Surgent Gaming) it was clear, that some heavy brainpower is included in the design (complex and hard enemies)
- A game launcher is being developed, which will be available for Windows (currently awaiting only Windows certifications on it). This will allow players to update all games they have installed through the launcher to be updated automatically. This is a great benefit for the players as well as the developers as well, as it won't be needed to download and install the newest versions of the game and is a basic expectation of games nowadays. The game launcher can be available to integrate into other projects as well - work with the community - details on cooperation can be agreed upon with
- The game will be available on Android through the Google Play Store as well
- Communication of the project is transparent
Tokenomics
Currently the team is working with 2 tokens:
- Astra is the main token of the studio, provides discounts for pre-sales and special supporter tiers (see this post). It also drops Stellarum weekly 1 Astra = 0.1 Stellarum. It might also be needed to buy special in-game content or used instead of Stellarum.
- Stellarum is the payment currency and is used to buy in-game items, crates etc.
We have currently a pre-sale going on, where most of the packs were already sold out. These packs can be bought only with Stellarum, which doubled the price of the token on the market:
We are expecting a game release within a month, and the crates will be sold in game for double the Stellarum then what they are going for now, so if you are interested, then you might like to scoop up a few creates! Also buying a few crates now is the cheapest way to get a few cards in the game on launch. But there is an important information, that cards can be bought for a fix price in the game. So that is also a play you might follow after release.
More info on the sale: @astralwars/astral-wars-discounted-crates-sales-for-the-open-alpha-mutation-card-reveal
You can also join the games discord channel and ask away : https://discord.gg/YxRGuxATAZ
Take care and have fun!