Gm gm everyone. It is with great pleasure to bring forward to you today a proposal for the long-anticipated Gotchi Crawler! I have recently teamed up with Slick and we’ve begun building a full demo for the game. After months of designing in the background, the time has come to open up to the community and share with you the game premise, vision, and road ahead. Strap in.
Before we begin: please note we are in the very early stages of the development and many things will likely change– by a lot. This is especially true for any game balancing mechanics like rarity modifiers. These numbers will require extensive play-testing.
For reference, you can view the full litepaper here:
I will touch on the best bits here:
Opening Lore
Many millions of blocks ago, before any of us were summoned into this plane, a vast cavern was discovered deep in the Daark Forest. A small team of pioneering gotchis ventured into its depths and discovered enormous alchemica and geode deposits! It didn’t take long for word to get out. The area quickly grew into a thriving mining town.
Some time later, the mine was closed, sealed, and the entire town abandoned. There’s very little record as to what happened.
Nobody knows the real reason behind its closure and all that’s left are the rumours and legends. Some claim a major mine shaft collapsed, trapping dozens of workers inside. Others say a mysterious dark energy was discovered deep within the mine’s core and in an attempt to stop it from spreading, the mine was sealed and abandoned.
Today, there’s been signs of activity emerging from within this harrowing place. The sealed portal has again been opened and from it a mysterious darkness spreads! We must enlist our bravest souls to descend into the abyss and vanquish the source of evil.
The real story will unfold through gameplay. You can expect:
A deep backstory with plenty of surprises
New characters with origin stories.
New races to encounter.
Game Premise
The game is a single or multiplayer (up to three) roguelike dungeon crawler. Players must descend, gather treasure and fight off swarms of enemies along the way. On each floor multiple of ten there is a merchant floor where players may exit the mines, capturing their score. Or, they can choose to descend further. Take note, if they die or run out of time before exiting, their score will be zero!
Simply put, the core gameplay loop is enter mines, descend, gather treasure, exit / die, skill up, descend further, repeat
The game is designed in such a way to facilitate solo play, however you are at great advantage to play as a team!
Game Style
Gotchi Crawler remains true to aavegotchi’s roots and will be rendered in classic top-down pixel art. Your on-chain gotchi will of course be your avatar and feature new animations for each weapon type.
A sample map to show off some of the demo assets.
Trait Mapping and Abilities
Your gotchi’s traits matter! The full game will make use of all gotchi traits. Due to the nature of roguelikes, some traits will not be the same as in the gotchiverse (HP regen, for example).
We also have plans to incorporate some wearable types to have abilities and unique functions. For example, pets will take on passive abilities like loot gathering, tanking, and attacking.
A Boon for Asset Holders
One of the core design principles is how to bring value back to the community? While creating a fun game is priority #1, we also want to build mechanisms that give fresh new utility to existing Aavegotchi assets. One thing we are really keen on is finding value for as many protocol assets as possible. These are slated for the alpha release and beyond.
Concepts so far:
GHST: the in-game currency is corrupted GHST (cGHST). This can be found in-game or purchased pre-run at a rate of 100cGHST : 1GHST. This conversion is a one way street and players cannot sell cGHST for GHST. cGHST is not an on-chain token.
Essence: permanently increase your play clock by infusing your gotchi with up to 100 essence (this does not translate into your gotchi being worth 1,100 essence on sacrifice).
Alloy: Increased backpack size: craft a bigger bag out of alloy which lets you carry an additional weapon. Possible multiple rarity tiers.
Schematics: spectral forge: In your run, there is a chance to spawn a spectral forge which will allow you to mint any one item from your wallet’s schematic pool. Spectral items are wearables that function 1:1 to their on-chain counterparts. However, they disappear at the end of each run.
Alchemica: Fat wallet: permanently infuse your wallet with alchemica, allowing you to hold more cGHST at any one time.
Alchemica: possibility to work with alchemica as elemental upgrades on weapons.
Aesthetics: players can also purchase fun cosmetic upgrades. Some ideas:
- Rainbow-coloured dash
- New weapon animations
Kinship burn: players can burn one kinship to get a continue after a game-over (one time per run only)
Overall, the goal is to not make any one of these upgrades essential for success.
What other juicy ideas do you have to bring more value and use-case to our robust economy?
The Road Ahead
The game will launch in a series of stages: demo, alpha, beta, and the final game. The purpose of the demo is to establish the core gameplay loop. From the demo phase, we will have a better understanding of the scope for the full game and what it will require from the perspective of funding and additional team. We are confident in our abilities to deliver the demo as outlined below:
Demo objectives and limits
Target launch: Mid October, 2023
- Multiplayer:
- 1-3 players
- Client side prediction for lag-free games
- Levels:
- Three types -battle, adventure, and puzzle
- Randomly spawn destructible objects
- Single biome, the underground forest
- Destructible objects - these can contain:
- GLTR points (this is how high scores are tracked in the MVP),
- Ladders which allow the team to progress to lower level,
- Lil Essence which if captured adds essence to the essence timer
- Battle:
- Health/AP bars for gotchis
- In-game stats based on gotchi traits
- Geode smasher & fireball weapons
- Dash mechanic for gotchis
- Enemies with health bars only (no mage creeps yet!)
- Simple enemy AI (roaming with an aggro range trigger)
- Puzzles
- Team-dependent pressure switches implemented into the levels
- Special doors that can only be opened with switches that (usually) contain treasure
- Essence timer:
- Shared timer for all team mates
- Approximately 15 minutes of play
- Capture “Lil Essence” to increase play time
- Scoring:
- GLTR = points
- One score per gotchi
- Merchant / exit floor:
- every multiple of 10, players will be able to escape and capture their score or descend lower
- Gameover screen:
- Appears for a gotchi if their HP goes to zero
- Appears for entire team if Essence goes to zero
- Sound FX & background song
- Leaderboard:
- Per gotchi
- XP event (TBC and pending Pixelcraft approval)
We believe this will give enough of a gameplay experience for the community to enjoy, provide feedback for, and determine whether they wish for the game development to continue.
Funding Request
We are seeking a grant request of $58,000 with a 4,000 GHST bounty.
$32,000 DAI Oliver Spoon for project management, game design, and game assets.
$24,000 DAI Slick for development
4,000 GHST for bounty and outsourcing components
$2,000 DAI for server maintenance
Alpha Phase and Beyond
Please see the litepaper for the full alpha phase plans.
Closing Remarks
I’ve spoken with @Jesse_gldnXross and our vision is in line with theirs regarding IP usage. This project has been ideated on and the concept refined over many months. Please have a read through the litepaper to see all that is in store.
I look forward to your comments, thoughts, and ideas.
some questions i have are: