Crystal Reign – Grand Strategy MMO Built with Ethereum

As the Crypto Games space starts to gain momentum, we start to see more interesting and complex games come out of the woodwork. Crystal Reign falls squarely into the category of interesting new Crypto Game. The game is currently in development and heading towards an Alpha launch at the end of the month. We were lucky enough to get some time from the developers to answer a few questions.

Tell me about how the vision for Crystal Reign came about. What inspired you to make a game like this?
We’ve always been big fans of games like Travian and Illyriad but felt that more recent additions to the genre have handled monetization in a fairly tactless way whilst also being stylistically a bit bland. At the same time, we see that blockchain tech offers a really good way to synergise gameplay mechanics with revenue generation. We’ve been geeking out pretty hard on all the game theoretic mechanisms that can be implemented with cryptocurrency so Crystal Reign is, in a sense, our canvas to try out some of these ideas.

What is the basic gameplay, story, and marketplace of Crystal Reign? How does the game work?
Crystal Reign sets the canvas for large scale battles across a 3D hex grid map. Players are given tiles where they can build their cities and armies in preparation for weekly events called “Shard Drops”. During these drops random tiles are selected for players to fight over. Those who hold the tile the longest win 1000 of our currency, CRS, alongside 80% of revenue that week in both ETH and CRS. We’ve created a lot of ways for players to build memorable experiences through the strategic options available to them. What we enjoyed most about games like illyriad was the deep political intrigue that came about from the gameplay. Some battles would be talked about long after they ended and guilds developed their own particular history. We want to create a similar environment where the lore is created by the players. Manoeuvres such as disguising your army as an envoy of trade caravans or feigning attacks are both examples of abilities we’ve added to help facilitate that.

What are some of the barriers you see ahead for your project and Crypto Games in general?
While we’ve based our game around some of the classic browser MMOs of the last decade, none of them have had monetary rewards in quite the same way as Crystal Reign. We see that having 80% of revenue up for grabs might create a more aggressive player environment which, in a game that hinges on community, is a crucial consideration. This is why we’ve focused particularly on the guild system which uses smart contracts to effectively create “trustless” cooperation between members. We have 3 different distribution types for guilds: feudal, egalitarian and tribal so it will be interesting to see which distribution turns out to be the most effective as the game progresses.

Any key dates or milestones coming up that you would like to share?
Our alpha testing starts at the end of the month and we’re allowing all investors with over 100 CRS to participate. We’ll take a snapshot on the 31th and whitelist wallets on a rolling basis from there.

For more information about Crystal Reign, visit their website, or follow them on twitter @CrystalReignCRS.

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