sludgefeed.com
With titles like Gods Unchained, Axie Infinity and Neon District making significant progress during the year, it stands to reason that 2020 could be the year where blockchain games begin to finally find a broader audience.
One game that has stood out to me over the past few months is Crypto Space Commander (CSC), an Ethereum-based (ETH) sandbox MMO set in a vast galactic universe where players can explore, mine resources and battle with other ships.
CSC is being developed by Lucid Sight, a startup that raised $11 million to build CSC and MLB Champions. Notably, the company is also building out a developer toolset called Scarcity Engine to lower the technical barriers to entry into blockchain game development.
The game is currently available on Steam as an Early Access game for $9.99. While it’s fairly raw in its current form, Lucid Sight notes that it is actively seeking gamer feedback to quickly iterate and push updates.
“CSC is a passion project with plans for massive features and content in the coming months,” states Lucid Sight. “We want to actively show you what our small studio can do day-to-day and work forward with the support of a dedicated community.”
The game is one of the purest play-to-earn titles I’ve seen to date and even has its own internal currency, GFC, that can be used for crate purchases. These crates contain parts for mining, defenses and battle, and can even contain an entire starship. Notably, all CSC ERC-721 items are minted and transferred on-demand for the approximate Ethereum network gas cost, reducing CSC’s load on the network.
CSC’s secondary item market is also very healthy. According to data from NonFungible.com, the game currently sits in the top-10 of all blockchain games for weekly total USD transacted, seeing roughly $10K per week on platforms like OpenSea.
While it took a little while to get comfortable with the controls and gameplay interface, I finally found my stride, traveling between star systems to mine asteroids of all sizes to obtain a variety of different metals that I could either sell on the open market or use myself to craft various starships and attachments.
Each starship class has unique characteristics that players have to understand and leverage to make the most of their gameplay. Obviously, the better the starship, the higher it’s worth both in the game and on the secondary markets (hypothetically).
The ability to customize your starship while balancing between mining and combat attachments offers a unique experience that impacts how you play the game. For instance, I loaded up my Corsair ship with all mining-focused attachments but accidentally found myself in battle in one of the sketchier parts of the galaxy. Obviously, I didn’t last long. Lesson learned.
It’s clear that the Lucid Sight is focused on bridging the worlds of blockchain and mainstream gaming. One clear example of this was the previous Star Trek-themed sale, which saw the U.S.S Enterprise NCC-1701 Starship sell for $15K.
Additionally, the exposure gained through its availability on a mainstream platform like Steam should give the game access a broader audience of gamers.
While CSC has some work to do in lowering the barrier for typical gamers to learn the intricacies of the game’s mining and NFT-driven economy, Lucid Sight is taking all the right steps to set the game up for future success.
I personally look forward to seeing how things develop. In the meantime, I’ll see you out there in the great beyond.