The Chromia community is growing. We’ve been very lucky to be discovered by several amazing developers that have invested their time in trying out our platform and building with Rell. The Community Pioneers program is our way of highlighting the work of developers building on Chromia.
This month’s Community Pioneers are Dennis Kirsch and Simon Sorgenfrei, two German developers that are behind the creation of Chain of Alliance, an auto battler game that runs completely on the Chromia blockchain. The concept is simple, you place your team on your game field and let them automatically battle against your opponent. The skill lies in finding the right strategy to place characters with fitting synergies and items at the right positions.
The latest version of Chain of Alliance was launched on the 22nd of May and has already received praise from the community and blockchain gamers. We asked Dennis and Simon what brought them to develop this game on Chromia, and what they think about the future of gaming and blockchain.
Thank you for both replying to our questions! First of all, I would like to ask how the game, Chain of Alliance, came into your mind. What was the inspiration for the game?
The idea of the game originated from our personal gaming experience as well as interest in blockchain technology. In our experience, the gaming community is more and more dissatisfied with the centralized management of games. This is apparent due to unjustified bans, unwanted “updates” and unfair balancing of in-game mechanics, as well as controversy surrounding specific companies. With that in mind, we had the idea of combining the advantages of a decentralized blockchain with an existing game genre, to explore a new niche market. The addressed trigger for dissatisfaction can therefore be solved by decentralized government enabled through blockchain. Our main goal in this regard was to keep the users and their needs first. This is the reason one of our first features was a government system to balance champion stats through user proposals and votes. In our opinion, Chain of Alliance’s integration of blockchain technology in the fast-growing auto battler genre creates a new, user focused, game concept.
Blockchain gaming has been growing quite a lot in the last two years. We are seeing a growing interest from bigger companies in developing games on the blockchain, allowing their players to store their assets in a completely secure environment. How do you think blockchain gaming will evolve in the coming years?
The gaming industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. Even during the period of crisis we face during the Covid-19, the gaming scene is not stopping, due to the demand of distraction in these times. A huge barrier to break in order to penetrate the market is to recognize the needs of the target audience and satisfy them in a way they have never seen before. In our opinion, gamers are looking for transparency, trust and security. They want to be integrated in the design process, balancing process, and overall decision making. These needs resulted from the centralized, closed system of current games. Some of the reasons have been talked about in the previous question. Furthermore, the experience of server failure or even losing the complete progress of time and money put into an account resulting after a game has lost an appeal can be added to that list. Introducing blockchain technology solves exactly these problems and, in our opinion, should be the next step for gaming studios to explore.
At Chromia, we believe that blockchain should be a tool to empower creators, users and entrepreneurs alike. Do you have any tips for developers wanting to start building on blockchain?
Building applications on blockchain can be as easy or complicated as developers want it to be. Like other sectors of IT, there are a bunch of platforms that allow developers to use their SDK. Our first tip would be to research the advantages and disadvantages of each platform and see what fits best for your application. Some big factors that helped us decide was the UX for developers, easy-to-use API, as well as the team behind the platform. If developers want to create a game with Chromia, we can strongly suggest trying out the Postchain Client for Unity package that we published.
How did you hear about Chromia? What made you want to develop Chain of Alliance on our platform?
Simon heard about Chromia from Twitter and started reading into it. During that time, we have been on the lookout for a platform to build something on. Once he understood the advantages compared to other platforms, we started learning RELL. After feeling comfortable with Chromia’s technology, we were looking for specific use cases and ideas to build. During a one-week hackathon, we were able to create the first prototype of what would later be Chain of Alliance and have been working on it for almost a year now. Looking back at it, the ultimate factor was the UX for us. There were few moments where we couldn’t come up with a solution based off the documentation or talks with other developers and the team.
And finally, do you have any more exciting projects in mind to build using blockchain?
We do have something we are working on despite Chain of Alliance. We are developing a new game concept in a different genre. Our initial idea was to explore interoperability of NFTs between games, but we think that this will also be a fun and exciting game for the public. On the other hand, we have another, non-game related, project we are working on. Right now, we can’t give you much information about either of these projects though but keep an eye out for news. A huge factor that is keeping us from exploring all these exciting ideas and work full time on Chain of Alliance, is that we can’t spend the amount of time on it that we would want to. If anyone wants to join our team or is interested in sponsoring our development, please contact us at contact@chainofalliance.com.