Today we'll take a closer look at Rising Star - a music career management/simulation game, powered by the HIVE blockchain. This isn't the first time I've written about Rising Star, but enough time has passed since that article (with many of the features mentioned being implemented!) that a proper review/analysis is in order. This will focus more on the game design and mechanics, community, and anything unique to the game rather than profitability/graphics/etc. No score will be awarded in this review, as distilling it down to a number is a disservice to the game and can't be used to adequately compare games in this series of posts given the diversity.
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 Rising Star 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. An attempt is made to have accurate information included, but as projects are updated, this is all subject to change and may not reflect the current state of a project if enough time has passed.
Concept
Rising Star is a music career management and simulation game, where the player can engage in "missions" to earn the game's token STARBITS, with a chance at NFT rewards as well. Largely the game is focused on completing missions and collecting cards (NFTs on the HIVE blockchain) to increase the player's stats and grow their collection.
Platform & Tech
Rising Star is a browser based game, running on the HIVE blockchain. Cards are also available on WAX and OpenSea. Mobile play is available, made much easier by the game's QR code login option, and relies on mobile browsers.
Entrypoint & Self Sustainability
Rising Star can be played for free, with no minimum purchase required in order to start the game. A HIVE Blockchain account is required. NFTs are available for purchase which can increase a player's ability and stats within the game, however it is not strictly "play to win".
NFT cards can either be obtained through gameplay, purchased directly on marketplaces, or through booster packs. STARBITS are able to be exchanged for packs directly, allowing the player to grow their collection of cards in a self-sustaining manner within the game.
Tokens
STARBITS are the main token of Rising Star, with STARPRO being another - the former is used for mission rewards and card packs, the latter is largely reserved for the Music Promoter part of the game and has a use in the current Festival events and some card interactions.
Game Loop
As mentioned above, the game is focused on players completing missions. A mission, at the core of it, is a timed event that has requirements to start - usually player level, number of fans, and an energy usage. Given this timer, it's a semi-passive game that does not require dedicated attention during the mission timers. All players have an energy meter that has a fixed capacity (100%) and cannot be extended, but refills at a rate of 1% per 5 minutes. Pizzas and coffee cups can provide a boost to this, allowing for continued play.
When a mission's timer expires, the player is awarded a random amount of STARBITS, between the mission's minimum and maximum values. If a mission is completed too many times within a given day, the maximum can decrease, but I have not observed a decrease in the minimum reward. This is a better system than other games using this pattern as you can calculate an expected value of the reward and play accordingly. Fans, Skill, and Ego - stats that will increase over the course of gameplay, acquired by completing missions - also contribute to the potential reward.
As players level up and acquire higher stats, new areas with missions are unlocked. All areas seem to have similar types of missions in terms of energy cost/time/expected value rate, which opens up more possibilities for a maximization strategy in higher levels of play.
While it may seem fairly basic on the surface, it's an interesting challenge to be able to maximize the reward per day. It's a bit of an intrinsic challenge - one not brought about by the game, but more from an individual perspective - to effectively time missions around one's schedule while not over expending the energy meter and pizzas to refill the energy meter.
There's the ability to stake STARBITS to help support NFT music sales, crafting NFT cards, and ability to earn STARPRO by bidding STARBITS on mission completions. The bulk of the game is focused on the missions and unlocking new zones while growing the band from what has been seen so far. Seasonal events are implemented, as well as weekly festival events - good opportunities for collecting new cards.
For The Four Players
The "Four Types of Players" comes from Richard Bartle's Taxonomy of Players and helps distill potential points interest for particular player preferences (an online questionnaire for approximating a player's type is available here. At a high level, it evaluates players as Explorers, Achievers, Killers, and Socializers depending on their preferred activities.
With the unlockable zones and missions, leaderboards, seasonal events, and NFT card collection - there is plenty for Explorers and Achievers. The game's thriving community presents something for Socializers as well, even if it's not directly in the game. There's no player versus player mechanics, so Killers may be a bit left out (though, that's likely more of a statement on the genre than Rising Star itself) - the closest experience may be outbidding someone else in the Music Promoter mode.
Dark Patterns
A "dark pattern" is an aspect of a game that can potentially have a negative impact on the player, but is part of the core design of the game. These are not necessarily marks against the game, but I think it's important to call them out given the landscape of Play to Earn gaming.
Missions are timed, with witnessed intervals as short as 5 minutes and as long as 5 hours. The game actively pushes back against grinding shorter missions with reducing the maximum reward and requiring a relatively high amount of energy per minute of mission time. Unfortunately, these shorter missions typically have a much higher expected value of reward per minute of mission time than longer missions. Due to the decreasing value of repeated missions, this does help prevent a "pay to skip" pattern - no matter how much is spent on pizzas, a player cannot maintain the maximum reward if the same missions are played repeatedly.
Community
This is one aspect of Rising Star where it really shines brightly. There's an actively engaged community on Discord where Jux and Julie are quite responsive to resolving issues with the game if they arise, announcing new features for the game, and interacting with the players. Some music artists, such as those featured on the game's legendary cards, are also active in the Discord. Musicians are also submitting tracks, building a community not just around a music game, but around music as well. Allowing community artists to sell their tracks in game is huge, and is something that I haven't seen in other games.
Unique to Rising Star, is a weekly Radio Show on Youtube hosted by Jux. While not strictly branded as Rising Star, it's definitely a unique aspect to the community and fits the theme quite well.
The player base has been increasing steadily as well, a good sign of a healthy game.
Final Thoughts
Rising Star is one of the more unique projects in the blockchain gaming space. There's a full set of music themed NFT cards to collect, musical tracks available from artists, and seasonal music related missions. While the missions are timed based, there's a strategic element of resource management and optimization that isn't present in other games using this pattern. In my previous article, I noted that Rising Star was joining the Blockchain Gaming Accelerator - something that may have a positive impact to the development roadmap ahead. The low barrier to entry of only a HIVE account makes Rising Star easy to pick up, and with the self sustainable, passive play, an easy one to keep up with.