Last week I was talking about Exode's Game Manifesto and how I was pretty intrigued by the concepts it offered. Yesterday a first playable Alpha Build has been released so I finally got to take a look at the actual gameplay. While the build itself is still pretty bare bones and more of a preview than an actual playable game there are still some takeaways I'd like to share with you today.
If you haven't heard of Exode yet, it's a collectible card game space exploration colony management game... or something like that. The game takes place some centuries in the future and consists of two interwoven parts. Mankind has colonized the stars and started spreading across the universe when one day an alien invasion obliterates almost all of mankind in a single day. The playable Alpha build starts right there. You are the captain of a star ship docked with a star base when the alarm goes off. In this first part of the game called Evacuation you scramble to flee from the station before it's destroyed by the hostile alien forces. Evacuation ends with either you making it to hyperspeed or your ship being destroyed by the aliens. If you do make it out in time the second part of the game will start: Colonization. In this second part you start to rebuild a human colony on the random planet you managed to escape to. If you haven't done so already I encourage you to read their games manifesto as it's providing more information about how this is all going to play out some day.
Right after starting the Alpha Client I recognized one important fact: Exode is not going to be yet another idle game with minimal depth and not much of an actual gameplay like most other so called blockchain games. While most of it is yet to be implemented the depth and complexity can already be seen everywhere. The game starts with your ship approaching the space station. You can chose to either dock with the station right away or first examine what you got. You get to check on your crew, your ship and its cargo.
There's a lot of information available to you and if you feel like you can really get into all the details. Or you can simply ignore them completely. The cool thing is that you don't need any of that information to start playing the game, but having that information available obviously will help you to make better decisions. Once you dock the actual gameplay starts.
Your officers and crew members are scattered across several areas of the space station and it's up to you to decide what each of them should do. You can send them to load cargo or fuel, have them prepare your hyperdrive, escort civilians to your ship and so on. Not all of your crew are available to receive commands right away. Some of them are on leave or at the sickbay when the alarm went off so they have to return to you first. Some might even have their communication offline so you have to send another crew member to go find them.
The game itself is played in real time and while you order your crew around the events unfold around you. The aliens start their attack, additional military ships warp in and that random civilian in the hall is really unhappy that you didn't escort him to your ship yet. At the same time the crew from a different ship tries to steal your cargo and a fight erupts. Although in the early test build it's often not completely clear what's going on exactly, it quickly becomes apparent that you'll have to keep track of a lot of different events happening around you. Evacuation is a fast paced decision making game where you have to make the most out of a bad situation.
I really like what I've seen so far and I'm really hopeful that Exode will have a bright future. With all those blockchain games with zero depth Exode is a breath of fresh air, promising to actually offer a proper game. Besides the playable Alpha Exode also revealed some more artwork that I think is really good:
Personally, I'm all sold on Exode and I can't wait to see more of it. The game will release into a playable Alpha with player collections in the coming days. Colonization is scheduled to become playable in May. Right now they are having a Presale which will last until the end of the month. If you want to join the game early you need to at least buy an origin card which is 5$ right now. Down the road the price will go up to 10$. So, much as with Splinterlands, you have to make an initial investment in order to play but you won't have to spend anything else if you don't want to.
If you join the game using a referral link both the referrer and you will gain 2 booster packs which are sold at 2$ each currently. Since I really believe in the game and want to aid it's development I'm doing a little referral incentive program: If you join using my Referral Link and tell me your Hive account afterwards I'll send you an additional booster pack.
If you want to try the Alpha Build yourself, you can download the client from their Discord.
As always, thank you all for reading and let me know in the comments what you think of Exode yourself.