What has Aurory been up to in 2024? August is nearly over, summer is in full swing, Zzoos are singing, and you are probably wondering what to grill on your BBQ tonight. Well put those cooking plans on hold while you digest this HUGE community update instead.
Mobile is almost upon us!
We teased it, you saw it. Make room for mobile, because it’s coming in 2024. We’ve established important requirements before we can publish the first mobile version of Seekers of Tokane. Let’s break them down together:
Platform compatibility
The game must be able to run on Saga1 and Saga2, as well as be fully compliant on iOS/Android. We’ve been working with Solana Mobile for Saga compatibility and progress has been going well. The same can be said for the Android/iOS respectively. It takes a huge effort to optimize for mobile coming from a desktop native game, but we are proud to say that the game runs at 60 fps on mobile today.
Mobile interactions
The interactions must be refactored to fit the mobile experience. We must create a new interface, rethink the flow of menus, how to navigate, etc. This is the biggest one, and requires the most effort. Not only is it important that it’s playable, but it has to be ergonomically comfortable as well.
Legal compliance
We must be legally compliant from a monetization perspective. Traditional app stores do not approve of blockchain games, unless you respect certain guidelines. From a regulatory perspective, we have no choice but to comply. This is why we have the free-2-play track (off-chain) and the invested player track (on-chain). This is to support mobile and offer an off-chain experience that meets the app stores requirements.
Economic balance
One of the most critical tensions to manage throughout this process is the impact on our economy. A delicate balance has to be struck between minimally hindering the web3 experience while remaining compliant with web2 platforms.
The Story (Onboarding)
Our narrative and design team have been fleshing out lore for the onboarding sequence that players will go through when trying Seekers of Tokane for the first time. While we can’t spoil too much, we can tell you that in the first few minutes players will find themselves lost in a land, and will meet a new NPC, and seek clues to find their way back to the village. During this first land experience, players will learn about Nefties, Blitz Battles, potions, and other various core mechanics in the game.
Rewards Reimagined
Seekers of Tokane, at its core is a play-and-earn game. This means that as you play the game, you’ll have opportunities to earn real money. It’s no secret by now that we have been revamping our economic design to change the way that players can earn in Seekers of Tokane. A major focus in this feat has been placed on creating new models which ensure rewards are going to committed players and extraction is minimized.
New Weekly Aury Distribution Features
One special area of focus this year for the team has been on scoping a better experience around the Weekly Aury Distribution (WAD). If you’ve been with us for some time, you are likely already familiar with how the earning system works, but ask any newcomers and they will scratch their heads asking all sorts of questions. We intend to give more significance to the WAD by having new things in the village to celebrate the weekly payout. We want to make it a festivity, just like if you were standing in Times Square on New Years Eve, watching the ball drop!
$AURY Shards
We will be replacing OKA/TOKE with a single sub token called ‘$AURY Shards’. To obtain $AURY, players will need to win $AURY Shards through gameplay. These Shards will then be converted into $AURY on a weekly basis through the WAD.
Collection Score
In the past few months, we have begun exposing more information publicly about a new system we’re working on called the Collection Score. We even demonstrated an early prototype of how it will work. Check out Round Table #12 for more details.
To summarize, it has been apparent for some time that there is a lack of perceived value in Prime assets amongst invested players. We aim to address this directly with a new Collection Score feature, which will bring renewed interest in holding Prime assets like Collectibles, Aurorians, and Nefties that will raise the earning cap significantly.
Collector Rank and Progression
Your Collector Rank will give you a multiplier on your $AURY Shards. Growing your Collection Score to increase your Rank will be required to maximize earnings. $AURY Shards and Collection Score will determine the quantity of $AURY players will receive weekly. The amount will vary depending on the performance of other players.
Collector Leaderboard
New flexing rights are on the way with a new Collector Leaderboard. This leaderboard will keep track of the highest Collection scores in the community. Consider this the Seeker’s Hall of Fame. Get your name engraved on the Hall of Fame trophy.
Leveling Up
The experience of leveling up your Nefties needs a bit of love, we know. We want to improve the flow and make it much more dynamic, so in addition to Amplification, we will be awarding experience points (XP) for gameplay actions – such as winning PVE battles. In conjunction with the crafting system, players will be able unlock a whole range of new Neftie items at various levels. Each item will have a minimum level requirement, making it essential to level up your Nefties in order to access stronger equipment!
Craft Your Way to Victory
A new Crafting system is underway for Seekers of Tokane, and it will include three core components:
- Resources (crafting materials)
- Crafting Recipes
- Crafted Items (avatar equipment, Neftie equipment, wildcards)
The way the system will work is that resources and crafting recipes for powerful items will appear in lands. Players will be asked to explore the lands and go as far as possible to obtain the rare resources and recipes. We have roughly 150 recipes planned in total, ranging from acquiring wood with an axe to collecting flowers. We will also include special Neftie components from Blitz Battles, for example; a ‘Shiba’s tooth’ to craft rare items!
Ultimately, the crafting system will have hundreds of artifacts – such as rings, talismans, runes, charms and more!
World Map
Stage selection screens have been on our designers’ minds ever since we deployed them. We’ve made some improvements, but there is still work to be done to achieve our original vision. Due to this, we recently went back to the drawing board and came up with a new ‘World Map with Stage Nodes’ concept.
The World Map will feature all six regions. Each region will have three stages, which can be completed when each stage of a particular region reaches 100%. Each stage will have roughly 20 nodes to unlock, and will also offer many branching paths that can take you away from the main objective. Going down a new path may lead you to explore different lands to unlock special content.
We’ll be tweaking the progression as well, so that in the first five hours of play, players will be able to cover the first stage of each region. To unlock a stage, you’ll need to activate 1 or more monoliths. For example, to unlock stage three of the Desert region, you’ll need to activate a monolith located in stage two of the Ice region, stage two of the Volcanik region, and stage one of the Swamp region (in any order).
Some monoliths may be behind blockers that can be unlocked by solving puzzles. As you progress through each stage, the difficulty will rise aggressively, forcing players to come back later with a more powerful squad.
In addition, the World Map will feature a special node for Prime Events. Each season, there will be a special stage offering 20 lands, made exclusively for Prime squads only. Those lands will include rare ingredients, bigger rewards, crafting recipes to collect, and so much more. These Prime Lands will scale according to your squad level.
Last but not least, we will introduce the Abyss game mode. This Abyss Stage will let players embark on a never-ending run with a difficulty that scales according to the player’s squad. There will be a special leaderboard dedicated to the Abyss to display the most fearless Seekers that have gone the furthest.
Important Land Updates
Lands have been going through a big overhaul internally. We’ve established the main systems for land gameplay, now we need to add more fun. Here’s a bit of what we’ve got in the works for them:
Chroma System
We’ll start by increasing the amount of Nefties in each run. We’ll be using ALL our Nefties in each run leveraging our Chroma system. This will allow us to create many variations of Nefties with different patterns so that players can battle a green wood Unika in the Meadows for example, or a yellow sand Dracurve in the Desert. This will add a lot more variety by implementing unique Neftie encounters.
However, the only way to obtain a Chroma Neftie is from crafting. These special Nefties are Prime exclusive and in limited supply. The ultimate goal is to add variety to our marketplace as quickly as possible.
On top of chroma Nefties, players will be able to stumble upon Chest Eggs during their land runs. These Chest Eggs will have a unique spawn rate and once opened, they won’t appear again.
Land Augments
To add even more variables to the rogue-like experience, we will be introducing what we call Land Augments. There will be 6 elemental divinities that will appear in lands on a regular basis. Each will offer three power choices from a pool of dozen powers. These are temporary buffs that will play out over a limited time. Depending on your choices, you’ll be able to influence the layout of the land, the ingredients, the enemies or loot that appears, your squad status, etc. Some of your Nefties could even see their abilities double in power, or gain new abilities entirely!
Land Puzzles
We’ve been exploring the idea of having puzzles for your companion Neftie. For example, some lands will see blocked paths that can only be opened by taking a secondary path with a pressure plate to open. As soon as you have the right Neftie in your squad that is related to the symbol on the pressure plate, the interaction will appear and your companion Neftie will be able to open the gate. This is just one concept, but there will be many more like this, making exploration engaging and exciting!
Blitz Improvements
We have been constantly improving Blitz through balancing patches. #InMyrWeTrust has been trending in our Discord and we thought it would be a good idea to bring in some much needed improvements. These will consist of the following:
- Re-introducing six stats, similar to what we had in Tactics, meaning we’ll be bringing back Ether Attack and Ether Defense. This will add a lot more depth to battles.
- The idea of winning a battle as soon as one Neftie is K.O is something we want to change. The objective is to transform Blitz into a true 3v3 experience where knockouts do not immediately end battles.
- This means, updating the full ability list to add new gameplay to factor in the new stats.
- We also want to improve enemy AI by introducing diverse behavior archetypes, such as random, defensive, aggressive, and balanced.
The last Blitz improvement we want to introduce is Blitz Challenger NPCs. Think Team Bull, Team Bear and Team Claw trying to challenge your skills in Blitz. This will break the repetition of lands by introducing an NPC that players will need to battle in certain situations. Each challenger will have their own squad with consumables, so players will need to play strategically to defeat them!
Conclusion
That just about wraps up this update. We’ve got a ton of things cooking for you all and can’t wait for you to get your hands on all of it. We’ll be starting with some website updates this month, followed by a game patch in September just in time for Breakpoint where we’ll have our first mobile build being tested with the public! LFGame ⚡
Click here to 👉 Play Seekers of Tokane 🕹️
Connect with us on our socials 👇
