From the Co-Founder of Zynga (FarmVille) comes a new game. And this time a blockchain game!!! 👀 Siddartha Gupta Follow Apr 5 · 9 min read

*New updates at the end of article.

Hello All

If you have ever played Farmville and got addicted to it from the first play itself, then this article is certainly for you. Eric Schiermeyer, who is one of the Co-Founders of Zynga (parent company of Farmville) has launched a blockchain venture called Gala blockchain.

First a bit about Gala blockchain

Gala blockchain uses Ethereum blockchain as the base chain and ERC-1155 token standard for NFTs (tradable game items). ERC-1155 is a token standard developed and popularized by Enjin which has benefits like batch transactions, lower fees etc.

Gala blockchain is based on soft node model, where even mobile devices can participate as node operators. As a node operator you’ll get Gala coins and NFTs based on transactions your node processes. It will also act as an ecosystem of Dapps. Sandbox games is the first publisher which has already launched the first ever Dapp on Gala project, named Townstar. And this is where the fun begins!

Townstar

Townstar is basically a farm-town building and management game. It starts like Farmville with crops and animals and then evolves to industries, nuclear technology and so on. Game is currently in early Beta. Registration is email-password based but you’ll also be given a seed phrase and encryption password. Please write them on a paper or store them on a pen drive. New blockchain gamers might find it as an irritating step but these are essential for recovery or playing on other devices.

https://www.gala.games [Get free 100 Gala coins upon signup]

Once you have made the account and logged in, you’ll be given an option to upgrade to Gala+ membership. It takes $10, but gives you back $100+ worth of benefits straight away, which a NFT truck which delivers goods a bit faster than default one and $100 discount coupon for soft node license. Also 100 Gala coins which can be quite valuable if the project is successful. So if you can afford then do upgrade. Right now only BTC is accepted but soon they’ll add more crypto and fiat payment options. You can easily convert your cryptos to BTC via Coinbase, Binance or whatever exchange you prefer.

Free NFT truck you get when you upgrade to Gala membership

Check out this video for Alpha gameplay of Townstar.

Early Beta is open to all and mainly serves as a “training center” for players and of course to iron out bugs and some game logic. Even though it is early Beta, it works super smooth and bugs or issues are really hard to find. Just as it should be. This is sure worth appreciating. We see too many games with Alpha and Beta tags, and they are simply unplayable. I’m not just talking about blockchain games but also many AAA games!! Probably it’s because of the fact that the game development is led by Mike McCarthy, ex creative director on FarmVille 2. Around 10 devs are already working on Townstar.

In above paragraph you might have wondered why I used the phrase, “training center”. Well, the reason is that from late Beta onwards, there will be a weekly leader board system and top players will be rewarded with NFTs (maybe even Gala coin and box coins), with the most exclusive being Farmbot.

Farmbot allows the holder to mint the premium in game currency called box coins. And if you have played any free to play game, then you would certainly know how much valuable (or money sink holes!) these premium currencies are. In fact, Eric is so confident about the role and popularity of these farmbots, that he has priced them at $100,000 each!!! Quite expensive I must say. At current rate it is around 14.68 BTC!! Maximum supply of these farmbots will be limited to 1000 only. Many of these will be rewarded to first spot winners in the weekly leader boards and other top players will get parts of farm bot. If someone has all the parts, he/she can create the full bot. I suppose there will be quite a demand for these bot parts in the player marketplace. One can also buy individual bot parts priced at $10 per lootcrate. Lootcrate gives you 1 random bot part of varying rarity. So the stakes are much higher in Townstar. It is much more than feeding your cows and collecting the milk!

Just a small list of parts to build the farmbot!!

The thing that makes Townstar really different from other similar games though, is the serious attention to the details. It tends to mimic the real world in terms of game logic and concepts. This is visible from the first step on wards that is choosing the location. A real world map is presented to you with all the countries and their different terrains. You can choose 1 spot and start building your town from there. Location is very important. Spots near oceans provide with water transport (ships to transport goods), faster brime (can be processed to salt) production etc.

Plains provide more pastures which are good for the initial animal farm setup. Your farm animals can actually go out in the pastures and feed themselves reducing load on your workers and also the feed costs.

Lots of pastures for animals.

Forests have lots of ponds which can be cleared to get extra game funds. Probably the only natural tiles, which when cleared gives back money. Don’t clear them all though, as ponds are very useful for your town as you’ll read further. Forests also have lots of trees which provide easy wood, though the random trees might be a hindrance in town planning. But don’t worry, as everything that exists can be destroyed!!

So less space to build anything…

Deserts are pretty much barren but have oil seeps, so fuel becomes a lesser issue. I haven’t really tried this terrain though, so don’t have much more info about it.

That black liquid square is oil seep.

And of course how can we forget the high risk high reward mountainous terrain. Mountains provide ore (currently iron ore), which can be used to make steel, which can be further used to make….. well you know. Setting up mines and refining ore and then building factories is obviously expensive and slow process. Players trying to rush may find themselves stuck if proper planning is not done. Or then maybe have to spend on box coins to get out of that situation. You need funds to pay your workers, and to sell items you need to send truck/boat etc which costs some fuel. Also there is minimum amount of items that have to be loaded into the vehicle before you can send it to the market. So one can find themselves in a difficult situation when they don’t have enough funds to pay salaries or fuel or minimum number of items. Between, fuel can be produced in game itself, so once you build the oil pumps and refineries it’s not a big deal. Funds are what get burnt way too fast if you are not paying attention to worker salary or try to build too many buildings, but without items to process. Just like your typical real world!

Glorious Mountains!

Other than the terrain, you have productivity details. And these are what surprised me the most!! For example, pollution can increase plant growth time. Also well refill time. Makes sense right? Pollution and nature don’t go together. Then you have these wind mills to produce electricity which work best in empty areas. If crops and animal houses are around a pond or a marsh, then they require less watering by the workers. Brime production is faster on sea coastline. Workers move much faster on roads. Animals can feed themselves on pastures. Free range farming anyone? Forklifts to speed up industrial items transfer and tractors to farm crops and transport them to storage faster. Power plants provide electricity to adjoining factories automatically. Of course there are lot more details which are yet to be found. I suppose, all the early players will be at good advantage when the beta launches. In case you are stuck somewhere or just want to restart with better planning, then feel free to eradicate your town from the surface of virtual map. Devs, especially the game dev is quite active on discord. Even asking for your town screenshots and suggesting you the improvements to rank better in leader board! So what are you waiting for? Join the game and perhaps be a part of the gaming revolution!

Cows and sheep and chicken. Hope they add more animals….

Website: https://app.gala.games

Discord: https://discord.gg/CxZ4AC2

Please feel free to post your game feedback or opinions regarding the whole project in the comments below.

Cheers!

Siddartha

Updates:

1) Gala coins on Ethereum chain.

2) Farmbot parts and some other NFTs on chain. Can be viewed and traded on Opensea. https://opensea.io/assets/town-star

3) Gala account portraits now appear in Townstar map, leaderboard tables etc.

4) Faster versions of rancher and lumberjack added.

5) Gala nodes are online and provide Gala and NFT items to the node owners running them.

6) Ability to earn Gala by doing daily tasks like referring, running Gala nodes etc.

7) Gala node cost increased to $2000.

8) New bot for Townstar launched. Cranebot helps to speed up the construction of buildings. It is much less rarer than a Farmbot. Total 10,000 Cranebots will be available vs. just 1000 Farmbots.

Cranebot. Reminds me of Bob The Builder machines!

9) Limited time offer to buy a node for 2M Gala along with normal BTC payment option. 19 August, 2020 to 3 September, 2020.

10) ERIC and Townstar game devs AMA session:

11) Gala listed on exchanges Bittrue and Uniswap on 14th September. Bittrue is centralized exchange while Uniswap is one of the most popular decentralized exchange. Along with this, Simplex is also supported in gala accounts as fiat on ramping tool.

12) To celebrate Bittrue and Simplex partnerships, 2 special NFTs have been launched. One is Bittrue themed which you get by purchaisng 10,000 GALA on Bittrue and withdrawing to your Gala account. And second is Simplex themed for purchasing 10,000 GALA via Simplex. As usual, lucky node owners can get these NFTs in their daily NFT distribution.

Coming soon

1) Ability to earn NFTs and Gala while playing Townstar game. Actually trial has already started this week (2 July, 2020) with top player getting legendary “brain chip” as reward.

2) Internal NFT marketplace for easier and faster trading.

3) Allowing sandbox coin mining in Townstar via Farmbots.

4) Gala economy.

5)Voting mechanism to vote for games to launch on Gala, reward pool etc.

6) More games under Gala ecosystem.

Sources:

1) https://venturebeat.com/2020/03/10/zynga-cofounder-creates-blockchain-game-partners-for-decentralized-gaming/

2) https://egamers.io/inside-gala-interview-with-eric-schiermeyer/

3) Discord Conversations

4) Personal experience of playing Townstar