Spells of Genesis releases Android and iOS Beta, completes Milestone #3

Spells of Genesis (Sog) is an interesting use of blockchain technology as it differs from the usual fintech or payment applications. It’s a mobile game that combines aspects of Trading Card games with Arcade games. Players build the strongest decks, and put them to the test against various opponents.

Before the game can be officially released to the public, four self imposed milestones have been set by the developers, EverdreamSoft (EDS). Milestone #1, marking the end of a token sale, was completed last September.

The Spells of Genesis BitCrystal (BCY) Token Sale began in early August. After an outstanding start, raising more than 240 BTC in the first two hours, the sale reached it’s funding goal of US$200,000 in less than 4 days.

BCY are Counterparty assets that can be traded on the blockchain or used to purchase blockchain-based cards, playable within the first EDS title, Moonga, as well as SoG. They were issued with a limited supply of 100,000,000 units, with 70% on offer during the Sale. The unsold BCY were “burned,” making them unspendable, leaving 44,433,900.82 units in circulation.

Trading card sales further reduce the BCY in circulation, 50% of the total income gets burned every month. This makes BCY a deflationary cryptocurrency, there were 42,891,115 units left at the time of writing. EDS still owns about 26,055,000BCY, which the team are using to reward community contributors for helping on the project.

The token sale was hosted in partnership with ShapeShift.io, who provided the backend for contributors to pay with bitcoin and any of the platform’s supported altcoins. “We were fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Spells of Genesis for their BitCrystals crowdsale,” stated the ShapeShift team. “As an instant exchange for digital assets, we want to see a universe of such assets flourish – currencies, commodities, tokens, and much that hasn’t yet been dreamed. Spells of Genesis is pushing this narrative forward, revealing but the tip of the digital asset iceberg.”

The blockchain-based cards, also Counterparty assets, offer another interesting use of blockchain technology. 42 cards have been released so far, depicting numerous cryptocurrency and blockchain related projects and events. According to the team, sales have been outstanding. Although some of the cards are sold out, they can still be purchased on third-party stores run by community members.

“We are thrilled how the community responded. BitCrystals and Spells of Genesis cards quickly became the most traded assets on Counterparty. In three months we sold a total value of 3,085,571 BitCrystals that is worth roughly 85,000 USD and we burned half of them.”

• Shaban Shaame, EverdreamSoft CEO

Milestone #2 marked an early beta release, with 10 different game levels, while Milestone #3 marks the release of a fully featured beta version.

The newest Beta is available for everyone who wants to have go on the Web, while Android and iOS versions are available to all lifetime members who contributed to the token sale. We gave the newest version a spin to get to grips with the recent release.

There are 13 levels with 3 matches each on all versions, but the game feels more fun on mobile compared to the web preview. There is detailed information on power, spells and description displayed on the cards in the deck section. The levels look and feel more polished than previous releases, and each one has a basic story attached to it.

Health, power and bomb bonuses are back in the game, after disappearing from the previous update, which is great help during play. Overall, the graphics, sounds, and cinematics have received a refresh and a new “summon” menu has been added, with options to purchase off-chain cards.

“We are building the game and making great progress. The main things we will be focusing on is the game surroundings such as the tutorial, the leaderboard, the in-game events, the player vs player challenges, as well as polish the interface.”

• Shaame

Shaban Shaame, EDS CEO, explained some of the newly introduced features. When users play the game and complete a level, they will earn “Gold,” a new “soft” in-game currency used to buy “summon,” a new random card.

There’s also a new way to increase a card’s’ level, by spending “Elemental Crystals,” which come in 6 different flavours. Elemental Crystals are acquired by completing levels and through “crystallizing,” which is selling other cards to the in-game bank. Because players can only have 4 cards in a match, they can choose to crystallize their spare cards in order to level up 4 stronger cards.

When a card has reached its maximum level it can be “fused” with an exact copy of that card. When 2 cards are merged players get 1 “Strong Evolution” of that card, which can also be levelled up. When a card reaches its “Maximum Level” it can be merged with an exact copy once more, to the “Final Evolution.” The Final Evolution of a card can then be “blockchainized.” From that point on players can sell them.

We were able to level up 8 cards while playing, fused them, and brought them to their final evolution stage. We were also able to crystallize unwanted cards in return for Crystals.

EverdreamSoft’s Game Designer, Jasper Damman, gave Brave New Coin an overview on what’s to come in future releases. There will be a storyline which ties the levels together and describes the game world, based on bitcoin and blockchain.

“Instead of having an imaginary fantasy world, we instead have a fantasy world based on real world bitcoin events. Furthermore, this offers us a great opportunity for building partnerships and gaining the interest of bitcoin and blockchain communities. Lastly, it enables us to narrate the bitcoin story and ideals in a light, easy way to people who are new to it.”

• Jasper Damman, Game Designer, EverdreamSoft

Spells of Genesis Beta v3 is fun to play, has a much better feel on mobile and the storyline is beginning to take shape. The team is hard at work to create incentives that attract more players and to be competitive with similar offerings such as Spellsstone, Heartstone and League of Legends which are very popular and successful games. However, they don’t make use of blockchain technology.