Happy New Year to everyone from Surgent Gaming Studios!
We came to Hive officially on November 23rd, 2022, and since then, we have created and released two main games for Hive:
- Astral Revelations (pet tactics RPG)
- Astral Wars (collectible card game)
For the sake of this review, we will go back to the first post we made for Surgent Gaming back in November 2022. As you can see, we have defined what we saw as the problem, our vision and our mission.
THE PROBLEM
Games have lost their souls!
These days, your average game is either chopped up into presale DLC, plagued by loot boxes or stealing your lunch money with gacha collection systems. RNG reigns supreme regarding how far spending money gets, and you don't even own any of the (mostly useless) tidbits you receive! Monetizing the gaming experience—traditional or blockchain gaming—has begun to dominate the common motivation for creating games. The enjoyability of the player's core gaming experience has been pushed to the side to make a quick buck.
Storytelling has become optional.
The most memorable (and nostalgic) games often have a story to tell. That story influences how players interact with the game by teaching them essential lessons through its characters. With monetization overtaking creativity in game design, many gaming franchises have begun to downsize the importance of their lore or leave out the story entirely!
Blockchain games aren't accessible.
Some of the most popular blockchain games no longer have an "affordable" entry point for new players due to the "early bird" advantages offered in many presales. Other games unintentionally isolate their communities by requiring the purchase of assets (NFTs) that have ballooned in price beyond what would be practical for new players. Too many blockchain games foster exclusive clubs of competitive investors that hinder their growth.
OUR MISSION
Gameplay above all else.
As a blockchain game development studio, we aim to provide gamers with familiar experiences that merge traditional gaming principles with web3 values. We want our games to be enjoyable while supported by the digital ownership features made possible by blockchain technology. For us, this means offering a free-to-play system focused on rewarding players for playing the game rather than pressuring them to spend more.
Own what you earn.
Surgent Gaming is driven by a #play2own design philosophy where gamers own the assets they collect in-game. We don't want players to view our games as tedious chores connected to an earnings treadmill. Playing itself should be the goal, and keeping what you earn is the joyous byproduct of digital ownership. Our games will be accessible (with multiple localizations!) and rewarding regardless of how much you choose to invest.
OUR VISION
The interconnectivity of digital assets.
Central to the design of our games is the creation of digital assets that carry across multiple environments. This connectivity will provide the foundation for a gaming ecosystem capable of bridging to other communities and systems. Put, the assets (NFTs) earned in our first project are intended to *carry into the next. In the long term, we'd like to explore building support for these assets outside our games in the various metaverse initiatives being developed.
An open-ended e-sports community.
Building on the concept of interconnectivity, we want to eventually establish an e-sports community across our games that rewards players for participating anywhere in our ecosystem with assets usable in any of our games. This means "crypto"-sports competitors would earn crypto rewards that could be freely utilized or transacted.
A year has passed, so how did we do?
Astral Revelations
Our team released our first game, Pre-Alpha, on April 1, 2023, via WebGL, which is still available at https://s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/ar-0.5.0.1/Astral+Revelations/index.html. The game included an entire battle loop, dialogue, multiple NPCs to interact with, and a challenging AI opponent. We had 22 Pre-Alpha players who played for an average of 4 hours each over two months, resulting in 88 hours of gameplay. However, some players spent more time as completing all battles without losing characters was a mastery challenge.
While the players enjoyed the Pre-Alpha, we faced challenges with the code base, which was primitive and difficult to scale. Therefore, we stopped supporting the Pre-Alpha and continued building the game with a more modular code base that would allow us to launch it on Windows and mobile devices.
We have two full-time artists working on the game, and a significant amount of content (95% unseen) has been generated. We plan to put the game together for the open alpha soon, and it will be released on Windows.
Astral Wars
We created our second game in response to the rug pull that Chifibots executed on Hive. Our aim was to compensate the investors of Chifibots with assets from this new game. To develop the game, we used a newer game design that enabled us to launch it on both Windows and mobile platforms.
The game we designed is similar to Hearthstone and offers multiplayer mode or a challenging AI opponent. The outcome of this game surpassed our expectations.
With a fully fledged-out leaderboard, collection, crate and reward system, our game drew in a lot of players who found the game fun.
As of today, MORE THAN 2300 MULTIPLAYER MATCHES HAVE BEEN PLAYED without a SINGLE DOWNTIME.
The last player who joined was player No. 79, with a join date of 24-10-2023. New Registrations were not actively pursued, as a wipe will happen for the upcoming Open Alpha in 2024.
Through this, we realized our dream of making a fully deployed game that was highly enjoyable and put the game first. We have put service over profit, staying true to our vision of putting the player first.
Encountered Problems and Solutions
Our main issue was that the player had to download the entire game again every time the game received an update. Unfortunately, we didn't receive any help from Steam, which is not supportive of cryptocurrencies. To overcome this problem, we created our own customized launcher."
This launcher has the capability to include multiple games and is fully operational. We are currently waiting for Microsoft to review it so that signatures can be obtained to prevent the .exe file from being flagged as a trojan or worm. Our goal is to make it easier for game developers to create their games without having to worry about updates. This technology uses Binary Diff to identify the differences between the files on the server and those with the user. As a result, users will only need to download the differences, which will lead to a better user experience.
January
This was a time of high expectations from many users interested in the game model. We conducted our first airdrop, which we have continued to date (54 airdrops) without missing a single one. This was also a critical time for us to demonstrate our tokenomics.
In a second post, we introduced the different variants and explained how they would fit into Astral Revelations.
Lastly, in a third post, we provided a detailed version (over 4000 words) of how the economy would function, providing a more concise understanding of the economy despite all the information shared.
February
This month, we showcased animated NFTs and introduced $ASTRA staking rewards.
We also introduced the wisp bundle presale for NFTs that can be used for both Astral Revelations and Astral Wars.
March
This month was big for us as we previewed the NFT marketplace and showcased more animated NFTs.
And we announced the Pre-Alpha for Astral Revelations as we got everything ready for the launch.
April
This was the launch month for us, as well as the introduction of the First LP, which was the STELLARUM: PIMP pool.
May
After getting a lot of feedback from the players it was time for us to review changes that we needed to make with the code base, and it was also around this time where 
Motivated to cover the loss of the Chifibot investors,
June
This was another big month as the team prepped the release of Astral Wars. Considering the promises we made, there was a significant expectation for this game to be fun. As such, we held our 2nd AMA to discuss the roadmap.
July
The Astra Wars Pre-Alpha was launched with enough content to keep players discovering new details for several months!
August
With the success of the Astra Wars, time was spent planning an internal road map of new features and systems. Art continued to progress for Astral Revelations steadily, and the development cycle for Astral Wars was solidified mainly.
September
Astral Wars received its first major Pre-Alpha update wherein we introduced new card mechanics/types, teased the land system, and announced an end date ahead of transitioning to the next development phase.
October
Our first Astral Wars lands sale sold out using only $STELLARUM. $STELLARUM can currently only be earned by staking $ASTRA for weekly airdrops or via the $STELLARUM:$PIMP liquidity pool.
November
We released a cross-platform mobile version of Astral Wars and got approved to release crypto apps on Google Play. We also began developing our standalone launcher for all current and future projects.
December
The team took a break for the winter holidays to renew our energy for 2024.
We will be posting a separate article about the roadmap for the 2024 games. Besides we have also announced that we will be working on another game called NISM. However, it's important to note that we won't be controlling the tokenomics or in-game prices as we are only the game developers. Additionally, we won't be responsible for any game-related expenses.
Grammarly Premium was used to rewrite and improve certain parts of this post.