I originally stumbled upon Tides of Magic randomly through Reddit and being interested in blockchain games this sure peaked my interest off the bat with their idea. The unique proposition with Tides of Magic is that they want all crypto games to work within the game, as long as they are NFT's/ERC721 tokens it shouldn't matter from which project they are originally from, they should be able to interact with eachother. Tides of Magic wants to build a platform where any new crypto game can be integrated, not just from Ethereum but from any blockchain too.
Alain described it wonderfully as the super smash bros of crypto!
I had been a bit afk from researching more about the game for a while as usual steem stuff and IRL kept me busy, so I figured I'd check with the creator if I could ask him some questions about the game to save me some time reading up on it and at the same time I 'd write about it here and share the info with my followers. I was happy he took the time to do the interview!
Me: Why a cardgame, what's your inspiration?
Alain: I grew up on them, played a ton of Yugioh, MTG and spent way too much money on Hearthstone. I was a dungeon master for a number of years so I'm used creating worlds but my main inspiration is the Dragon Ball Super TCG which I think is just fantastic - they allow you to play any card as a resource and has a lot of comeback mechanics which is what I wanted to do. Another inspiration is also autochess.
Me: Oh I was not aware of the DBS TCG, will Tides of Magic be similar to it?
Alain: Not at all, it would be most similar to Magic the Gathering I guess because of the mulitple types of mana and mana isn't auto-generated each turn.
Me: Interesting! So what would you say the biggest difference would be between other TCG's and Tides of Magic?
Alain: The largest difference would be cross play as almost no other crypto games have it.
Me: Cross play how exactly?
Alain: Let's say for instance you have Axies in your ETH wallet, if you open our site you will have Axie cards, same thing with Etheremon, Ethercraft, Cryptopunks and many more to come!
(me checking my wallet during the interview)
Me: Ohh, that's so cool! It shows I have Axie cards!
Alain: Nice! That last card is a really good one.
Me: Could games from other blockchains, like Splinterlands be part of Tides of Magic as well?
Alain: For sure, it's a bit different since it doesn't use Metamask but it can be figured out. I wish I knew a dev that uses Steem so I could ask some frank questions, I did spend some time in the past trying to figure out Steem but the documentation was not great.
Me: I believe you there, we've been funding better documentation with our new DAO! That's awesome to hear about Splinterlands, though, gets me even more excited about this game and the idea behind it.
Alain: And it's web-based, so no need to download anything as you'll be able to play it on your browser directly.
Me: That's awesome, I imagine it will be easy to implement it for a mobile application?
Alain: That is definitely possible and I'm a pretty fast coder!
Me: Okay, let's get back to the gameplay, you mentioned there will be multiple types of mana and it's not auto-generated each turn, how will that work exactly?
Alain: You place a minion or a spell on a habitat and they'll produce 1 mana per turn, minions can be summoned off but spells stay forever. If a minion and a habitat share a faction they will have a special effect, this way it adds a natural progression to the game and elasticity, if you aren't drawing minions just take one off of your habitat if needed.
Me: Sounds a bit more complex than the current blockchain TCG's I know, any specific reason why you're making it that complex?
Alain: Because life is chaos, next question.
Me: Haha! Okay, one important thing that people are often worried about with TCG's are updates and how that will effect cards, how have you planned on handling this with Tides of Magic?
Alain: We haven't discussed that at length yet, but we will use 2 options depending on the circumstances. First option would be to nerf all copies of that particular card which is exactly what it sounds like. Second option would be to nerf all future copies of that particular card after block X, meaning that if you have the original first edition version of the card then you're in luck!
Me: Okay! Another important question regarding TCG's is if there will be a starter deck that people can play for free to try the game out?
Alain: Good question, we'll have a starter deck that you can play with but it won't be ERC721 so they won't be tradable but will contain a lot of cards from other games!
Me: That's nice! Okay I only have a few more questions left, I noticed the current presale of Tides of Magic packs is currently rising in value after each sale, what made you choose this method instead of the regular one?
Alain: That has been a staple of my contracts since World of Ether, I'm trying to force players to stop buying from us and buy from one another instead. I want the rarity of cards to increase over time!
Me: Okay, awesome. Last question: when beta and will it be open?
Alain: It will depend on the progress, if things look fantastic then it will be an open beta but if it still needs more work we will start private, fix some things and open it up after. Our aim for beta is January 2020! :)
Tides of Magic is a game I am really looking forward to in 2020, I am personally awaiting to see what the gameplay will be like and may create a teamOCD community for it as well once I can test the beta and if other players in our community like it too. I am especially looking forward to them integrating more cards from different games and wouldn't mind holding some Splinterland cards again. ;)
Tides of Magic have their own Steem account if you want to give them a follow! @tideofmagic and if you have any questions maybe he'll have time to drop in and answer them, else you can always join their discord to ask away!
Here's a link to their website if you are interested in participating in the presale and won't mind using my affiliate link.
They recently did a Steemit airdrop as well
Let me know what you think of this new and upcoming blockchain TCG and if you like the idea. :)
PS. Do you also have any cards in your wallet already from other games?^^
Hope you enjoyed this interview and are looking forward to a new year of blockchain gaming taking over the world. ;)
