Holo everyone! Wanted to drop by a quick non-official update for those wanting to find out more info on Holozing.
With the way the markets have been lately, we've had to make some decisions on where to focus the funding we are getting currently. We also want to mention how appreciative we are of our team, mainly those who have been on hive prior to being part of Holozing team as most have been okay with not getting paid for their time and effort immediately but allowing us to develop the project and pay for services from outsiders that aren't as trusting and tied to the project and the people here. So thank you once again to them, we hope to be able to clear out any outstanding debt soon!
Alright, some of the decisions were to pause 3D generation for now, while this one is the furthest behind for a beta version of the game with all creatures and healers turned into 3D with movements, etc, it has also been the most expensive one which we can't entertain further at this point in time. We hope that once the alpha version of the game is ready, testers will be okay with limited 3D creatures to test and potential placeholders acting as our healers and unfinished creatures for testing. It would be great if we could finish 3D for the beta release, hopefully with Vials being released and sold along with a working game being public and actively tested it'll help funding the project further in this regard.
Another thing we've had to postpone is polishing 2D artwork, while our recent reveal of the dragon-type creatures may seem great already, if you were to zoom in you would notice a lot of discrepancies which we aren't too fond of for the longevity of the artwork and project. It's not something that can be helped with the way the illustrator creates them and we've usually had our in-house artist polish them but at this time it's not something that crucial to get fixed so we will be postponing that as well until more funding opens up later.
Our main focus currently is getting the game alpha-test ready. Our gamedev is still busy implementing the unique healer abilities and then some unique creature moves before moving on to open the alpha up to a few testers. Initially we'll only be inviting some we think can help out the most with balancing the game and deciding on stats on healers, healer items and creatures, then later we'll open alpha up to more people to find any remaining bugs and inconsistencies that may exist. After all that is polished, we could be ready for the beta launch even if some 3D work is not yet finished fully, we'll have to see what the community thinks at that time if we should launch it as is and implement new 3D work as it comes and as funding allows it or not.
Another thing we're working on at the same time currently is to implement Metamask integration to the website, basically giving people the option to link their metamask account to their existing hive account or just be able to sign up using metamask only and then later link a hive account to it. We will also be enabling referral links to work for both hive account signups and metamask, so if a new user signs up through your link using metamask, they'll count as your referral, if however they link a hive account that already was registered, the referral will be void.
Other than that we're also working on our Alpha Vials to be sold soon. This may start out as only the sale of vials without the option of opening them up yet which may not be as exciting, but as you may have read up til now funding is quite tight and this could help out even if not a lot of interest initially. To add some incentives to buying Vials you can't open yet, we'll be moving some zing rewards from delegation to collection rewards and count vials as part of collection rewards. Meaning those purchasing vials and having them unopened may get bonus zing for some time moving forward until we'll allow opening. Once opening is enabled, Vials won't get as much of the collection rewards as they'll shift to reward players who are holding diverse items from the starter vials such as creatures, healer items, capture cards, all based on the rarity and amount of them an account holds.
In the mean time, we'll be revealing some new creatures we're adding to our roster and showing you the results of our naming contest for the dragon-types, thanks to everyone for participating, the entries were amazing!
If you have any questions about this, feel free to ask in the comments or in our Discord. Until next time! Make sure to follow @holozing for official news, reveals and upcoming releases.