Holo everyone, a quick non-official update of things we're working on currently and some upcoming news that might be exciting for some of you!
Gameplay
We recently finalized 6 healer abilities and @luckyblame has successfully implemented them. We are currently doing some testing to make sure they all work as intended! The healer abilities required some changes to the underlying code that popped some errors so it took a bit longer to get it all added but we're happy to have them now.
What's left at this time is to add a few unique creature moves, and by unique we mean moves that aren't directly just doing damage based on type, attack and enemy creature defense. Some that may change the status or stats of the creature that does them or towards the enemy creature along with when they occur during the turn, etc.
After we have these creature moves enabled, we're excited to share that then we'll be opening up the game to a few testers we'll invite and at the same time open up a channel in our Discord to apply to become one if we need more! We have a nice documentation of the game at its current state that testers will have to take a look at and aside from testing they'll also help us balance the game from creature min-max stats for each level and how much they can gain upon level ups. Balancing creature moves and what kind of range they'll have in "move points" based on rarity and the same for healer abilities and items, starting with the ones that come from the Alpha Vials (starter pack).
Quite exciting times ahead, we hope to get all of this done in q4!
Our first sale
Along with the private alpha and shortly thereafter public one where we can stresstest servers and find the more hidden bugs, we will also be launching our vial sale.
Players will be able to purchase Holozing Alpha Vials
These can remain closed and will allow players to earn Zing collection rewards for having them. When the vials become able to be opened, the distribution of Zing will change to give closed Vials 10% compared to opened ones getting 90% of the collection rewards. The collection rewards are currently at 1k zing/day and only affect the soulbound achievement we have in place for our advent calendar in 2023, but by then we'll be adding more zing to collection rewards. This will give buyers of Vials a lot of time to earn some extra Zing in preparation for the game going into beta. When we go into beta it means that everyone will start playing the game from scratch and the items from the Vial that have been earning you zing will start to dilute the earnings as players will be capturing creatures in the wild, finding materials and holo dust when defeating creatures and eventually also start crafting items with your professions which all will earn you Zing!
We believe that this is the best way forward in an attempt to further fund the progress of the project and reward those who bought Vials early and have been around to find out about us at this time!
We have also not shared any gameplay footage publicly in an effort to surprise the community when alpha arrives, while we understand some may be concerned that "there is no game", you can rest assured that team members and a few selected people have seen it and tested it out. I just did quite a bit of testing before writing this post. ^^
In short, what's left to do in q4:
Metamask, email and other social login options with working referrals.
Private alpha and balancing, then public alpha.
Vial sale and opening of Vials.
More creatures! Profession and gathering implementation.
Further 3d'ing of existing creatures, environment, and healers. (expensive)
Then beta launch! (hopefully with everything 3d'd, but if not then few placeholders)
What can you do to help?
Our primary options to help fund the project are currently Hive Power delegations, that will continue to be an option for some time forward. In the near future, purchasing Alpha Vials will also help us out a lot and you'll be rewarded Zing for that as well which will be our primary in-game currency.
Some things to keep in mind, all funding goes straight to the development of the project. While we're quite small we have big aims and an ecosystem we want to last for a very long time. Buying Zing in and of itself doesn't directly benefit the development but it allows for delegations to continue to be profitable for those looking for short-term gains. This also means that the project itself will never hold any Zing or create it to be sold to potential partners, investment offers or any of the kind that would give them an advantage over how it has been funded so far through community crowdsourcing. If outside investors want to get in, they'll have to either delegate HP or buy Zing from the community or (soon) purchase Alpha Vials. This will not change for any reason.
While this method might be slower than usual, it gives us the advantage to keep the project distributed fairly while placing more value on Hive Power and without large investors being able to control and manipulate the market with off-the-counter buys or the likes as we've seen happen in many other projects. We hope you like this approach and we thank you for your continued support and welcome new ones!
Thanks for reading and being part of the beginning of Holozing!