I just finished watching the recording of the Invenium Town Hall that was held on Friday, if I remember correctly, and where Arcade Colony was the focus.
A big chunk of the 1-hour town hall was the showoff of the gameplay of the first game that will be launched on Arcade Colony, Moon Karts. This is its whitepaper, by the way. I only browsed through it for now, so I'm not familiar with all the details yet.
I have to say, thinking about how long it took to see Goals from its first presentation and then pack sales to a playable stage, this one looks quite far out, which is an improvement. I mean, there are things to wrap up and add, but at this stage, the game is playable and seems quite fun for those who enjoy the genre. It doesn't look easy to control the karts, and I assume if you collected a bunch of rewards and got shot from behind and lost them or if you ran into a trap and lost the race, you would be quite frustrated, lol. Luckily, I think I saw a shield among the options to equip your kart with, so maybe there are ways to protect against attackers looking to steal your loot. 😀
The game can be played in single player mode, which is just a practice mode without any rewards, and in multiplayer of up to 6 players when you play for real and for rewards.
Packs are already openable and cards combinable in this demo version too.
One can also define up to 4 presets of various configurations that can be loaded before any game. After the race, it can be saved as a file for whatever reason, like to check the veracity of results.
Screenshot from the town hall with Aggroed and the other participants racing each other.
Moon Karts is developed by a 3rd party team, with only the blockchain integrations taken care of by the Invenium team.
The graphics is pretty basic, but that solution was probably chosen on purpose to reduce operational costs. One thing I remarked from the presentation is that the colors of the karts may not be the best compared to the background, in some cases. I just chose a screenshot where the boost was activated, to light up the kart a little better, otherwise, it seems too dark, with almost no contrast with the track.
I'd like to see a mini-map with players' positions added, maybe. Or even times, even if the entire race is only 2-3 minutes long. Much easier to strategize about the timing of using the options at your disposal if you know you are about to be caught or if you are close to the one(s) in the front.
Also, I haven't seen this in the presentation, but in the whitepaper ranking and season rewards were mentioned. Hopefully, finding opponents will be made based on how close the rankings are, similar to what happens in Splinterlands, to some degree. Otherwise, we might have a few people winning all the races.
Another new element is regarding the referral system. Referrers could earn from both purchases of referrals (above $20, in-game currencies do not count), and from their earnings through gameplay. The second part isn't yet in the whitepaper, but I heard Aggroed mention it.
Have you seen the game demo? What do you think about it and what has been presented so far?