The spacemandev Interview: Building Blockchain Games & The Pockets xNFT
Spacesuits, RPGs (the game not the weapon!), building web3 games, advice for new developers and the first look at the brand new Pockets adventure game.
The term web3 was coined in 2014 by Ethereum co-founder, Gavin Wood.
spacemandev established his crypto identity in 2013 before web3 even EXISTED. You may recognize him from his spacesuit era where he visited hackathons to “evangelize decentralized problem solving”.
Since then spacemandev has worked on numerous Solana projects, most recently with his Spaceman Collective developers on a Mad Lads integrated game called Pockets that runs on $BONK.
Download Pockets from the xNFT Library today!
What was your entry into web3? What games were you building before Kyogen Clash and Pockets?
spacemandev: I got into crypto in 2013. I used to wear a full spacesuit and go to hackathons and evangelize decentralized problem solving.
spacemandev: Kyogen was my first fully on chain game, before that, during COVID, I was super involved with virtual tabletop engine "Foundry VTT" where I wrote a lot of plugins for board games and DND-like tabletop RPG systems.
What is the Spaceman Collective? Who are the devs building Pockets and how long has it been in development?
spacemandev: Spaceman Collective is a loose collection of developers that work on experiments in the blockchain ecosystem. Pockets is built by me, JollyGrin and petrykiw.
Game started development on Aug 10, 2023.
Do you have any advice for new blockchain game builders?
spacemandev: Implementing web3 into games falls under one of five pillars.
Trusted Compute
Composability
Open Game Economies
Governance
Payment Rails
If your game can't make use of one of those five distinct primitives, it's unlikely to benefit from web3.
What is Pockets?
Pockets is a group oriented game where players work in factions to try and win prizes from a $BONK prize pool.
The more people that play, the bigger the prize pool grows. There are three ways to win each worth 20% of the total prize pool.
You can help your faction get Domination victories through the Arena, train your skills for the Knowledge victory or burn resources through your faction to earn the Wealth victory.
How do you play?
Currently you must hold an NFT from a supported collection like Mad Lads, Famous Fox Federation or Kyogen Clash.
You choose one of your NFTs and mint a character. Character names are randomized (and you can keep randomizing until you find one you like) however skills are deterministically generated based on your NFT attributes.
A character has six combat skills and six non combat skills. These skills can be upgraded by consuming Units (for combat skills) and Resources (for Non Combat Skills).
Leveling up skills does two things:
Helps your faction get closer to a Knowledge victory
Upgrading combat skills helps you control more units of that type
What are Factions?
The foundation of gameplay in Pockets revolves around Factions. Any character can create a new faction or join an existing one, becoming a Citizen of that Faction.
Once you join a Faction you will be able to:
harvest the resource fields
participate in governance by creating and voting on proposals
contribute and help earn on the of the victory conditions
Factions have a built in governance system that allows collective decisions to be made by Citizens. Players can make proposals, vote on proposals, delegate votes and transfer their votes.
How is $BONK used by Factions?
$BONK is used to create Factions as well as Discover, Prospect and Harvest resource fields.
Discover resources by paying a scaling cost in $BONK (based on how many resource fields have already been discovered)
Prospect resources with a lottery system that determines if a lucky ticket is generated that claims a new resource field for a Faction.
Harvest resources from the Factions inventory and speed up timers by paying $BONK.
Once enough resources are gathered you can begin to process them into more valuable ‘top tier’ resources or to train units. To make top tier resources your Faction must create Stations.
All $BONK generated during gameplay is added to the overall prize pool.
How do I battle other players?
The battle system in Pockets is built around two players bringing a set of units against each other.
Units have random bonuses against opposing players based on what Combat Station tier they were trained on. Winners gain Domination Points that are used for domination victories with Factions.
The units are randomly shuffled and the top unit from both sides are picked to fight. They each roll a d20 (twenty sided die) and add their bonus against the other unit type (if they have one).
The unit with the higher number survives and fights the next unit, and the lower number unit is removed. This goes on until one side is out of units, that side is the loser of the battle.
How do I get started playing?
Download Pockets from the xNFT Library today!
