2018-10-25 01:20:15 · 4028 views · 9 min read

Etheremon has been a growing sensation in the dapp gaming world and has come a long way since it's release in December 2017. The game might seem similar Pokemon or Digimon, but as we discovered from our interview with Etheremon's Co-founder Nedrick, it is evolving into something very different.



We wanted to know how much other games inspired Etheremon, what can players currently do in the game, talk about the Halloween event, and try to sneak out some information about what the future of Etheremon will look like now that they are collaborating with Decentraland.

What makes developers wake up in the morning and decide I want to make a dapp?

For me personally, I think that the technology at the moment is very centralized. If you talk about the key players of the centralized market, you think of Google and Facebook, but if you take the game industry, which we are in, you think about Steam, and the Google and Apple app stores. Gradually you see these big companies with very strong technological resources gradually take all the benefits from the small companies that actually created the content.



This is not the way the world or technology as a whole should function. In the next probably 10-15 years, people will demand a fair share of the benefits, and that's why we start seeing dapps begin picked up by developers. What keeps us up at night is the question of what can we as a small team contribute to solving the problems that our blockchain ecosystem is facing? We want to one day decentralize everything bringing benefits to smaller companies that are trying to create content for the world, that is the way the world should function in the long term.

How much did Pokemon and Digimon influence Etheremon?

In the beginning, Pokemon is very much of an inspiration for us. All of us love Pokemon, and we grew up with it as our team was all born in the 90s. When we thought about creating a game with blockchain technology, there were not many options, because a good dapp game needs to have a good variety of characters. Pokemon and similar games like Digimon can satisfy that requirement, while not many other games can do the same.

Gradually we had more ideas as the game developed and slowly we moved away from this initial inspiration. We listened to our gamers our community as they have a lot more ideas that we could use to develop the game, as well as implement ideas of our own. Now we have a lot of features that are so different from what Pokemon has done, reducing its influence on Etheremon.

Is it too late to start playing? Can new players still get new monsters?

For new players we offer them options to get free monsters, we want them to try the game for a low cost. Actually, all the transactions cost a small fee, so we will try to lower the barriers by giving new players free assets so they can try all the game modes.



At the moment we are working on a new feature called "Challenge Mode" that makes everyone equal and introduce battle moves for the monsters. Everyone will have a somewhat equal chance to acquire a move, hence this feature will welcome new players. Meanwhile, veteran players would want to play around with many Etheremon types they have and collect all the moves available. This feature along with many others will make the game look very different to what it is today.



We hope that Challenge Mode will help to grow our community as the new users will have a higher chance to defeat the veteran players in battle. Besides offering new features like the Challenge mode, as we are progressing the game, we also plan to bring Etheremon to the VR world. As such, we won't ever say it's too late to join, and there will always be something new and exciting for everyone to enjoy.

What can players do on Etheremon today?

In the game, we have 4 game modes. The first one that most first-time players will play is the gym mode where they can train their monsters with a bot to gain the first few important levels before joining more fierce battles. After that, once they catch 3 Monsters, they can form a team to play Practice mode, which speeds up Mons training quite significantly. They can also play Ranked mode where they can fight other players in ranked battles to win in-game tokens (EMONT) that they can spend to acquire energy or play the 4th game mode called Adventure. In Adventure, players can acquire a special item or a rare monster that can only be found in specific sites. At the moment we are adding more features on top of the Adventure mode as there are a lot of things that we can do with this. Recently we introduce a Halloween event since it is October where players can collect special items called soul wisp to revive some “Dead” Monsters.

Could you talk about adventure mode a bit more? Why did you build it?

We see that there is a lot of more stuff that players can do with their monsters. What we did, in the beginning, was allow players to train them up, battle with other Mons and make new monsters by allowing the Mons to reproduce by laying eggs. Then we did a lot more for improving the stats to strengthen the mon including allowing mons to use items.

We thought that there should be a way for both new users and veteran users to explore and level up, so we developed Adventure Mode. A place where we could place a lot of items, and we can keep making it bigger and a lot more fun, for example at the moment people can get booster shards for the boosting the mon's stats, or level up stones to quickly increase the level. Then by having different sites, there are obviously going to be different drops and more importantly Mons. Players can choose to send their Mon to these sites, and after a while, the Mons will come back with any items they found from the site.



We will also gradually improve game animation for this game mode to better our player’s experience. In the short term, what we want is to leverage this mode to offer different layers of gameplay, for example adding items that can teach Mons battle moves to make the battles a lot more fun. There is just so much that we can do with this Adventure Mode.

You're suggesting that we could one day see a 3D representation of Etheremon?

We are working with Decentraland right now. Specifically, we want to bring the Etheremon battles to VR. Compared to how battles look right now it will be a totally different experience for our players, as they will be able to see their monster in 3D and moves for the very first time. They will be fighting in Etheremon stadiums as well as hanging out in different locations within the Decentraland environment. Timeline-wise, we are trying to achieve this by 2019. We have showcased some of the VR battles and are working to improve it.

How is the partnering with Decentraland, is it a good platform to use to expand your dapp ?

When we started, we were fully engaged with Decentraland since we found a good synergy in both businesses. We both want to focus on gaming, and we are really excited about decentralized games on Decentraland. The reason you haven't heard a lot about this is because we work on this in the background. Both teams are working closely together, and we don't want to push this via our marketing, at least not just yet, as we want to make sure we have a good product. Working together has been easy and difficult, both teams have experience in gaming, and we all have the same goal in mind. However, working at a distance has its difficulties like things sometimes take longer than expected, but we are positive about the value we can bring to our users.



As for is Decentraland a good platform to expand Etheremon? Yes, it is, I think that the world is moving to VR, even though the adoption is still low and seen as a novel idea this should be the way for gaming in the future, and especially for games that aim for long-term lifespans like Etheremon. If you're talking long-term, definitely VR is the future of this industry, and it will be worth it. We have received a lot of positive reactions from the community when we showcased the VR demo battle, which motivates us and makes us eager to deliver this to our users.

Who comes up with the designs of a mon? Is there a process in making them?

We engaged with some of the freelance artists in the beginning, we picked the models that we liked and that fit the style of the game. We also bought the rights to use them and commercialize them. Now we have our in-house artists that occasionally introduces new monsters in the game. On special occasions like when we partnered with Kyber, we designed Kyberra. In another occasion, one of our community members sketched a Mon that we later sent to our artist, and during the World Cup, we created Armadigoal. We approach this in a very flexible way and with our in-house artist we can better cooperate with our partners like Kyber to create the perfect Mon for them.

Is there going to be a limit to how many Etheremons will exist?

Technically no, but we need to consider the game balancing and the health of our in-game economy very carefully. We listen to the community needs on a daily basis. At the moment our community wants to see more in-game achievements to motivate players to progress further in-game and develop their Mons team as well as wants us to implement new game modes. We believe that we need to stay close to our community and listen to them as they are of the most valuable resources we have when it comes to feedback and suggestions for our game.

What are you working on now that the community as asked?

If you are in a community you know, we get a lot of suggestions every day, and we do analyze and take them very seriously. There are a lot of small things like changing the UI that we can quickly improve while there are features that we really have to spend more time to think and design, and to minimize the flaws that it may have if implemented.



Currently, the most requested feature is the achievement feature. Around November we plan to release the achievement system that will address the needs of veteran players to progress further and try new things, while also helping new players to learn how best to progress in the game. Eventually, new players should feel confident to progress on their own, and veteran players should feel motivated to try different mons and battle meta. We have to satisfy the different audiences and that is not something can be done quickly, so we have to ask our community to be patient with us.



Our community is wonderful as we can always share the ideas with them and let them discuss between them. We can eventually pick the good ideas that we like to work on. We always keep a constant line of communication with them so everyone can give us input. This a good thing to keep our game alive.

Tell us about the Halloween Special?

Let say you have a monster called Kyari which has many forms when you evolve it to the next form, the original form will be gone. These mons are considered “dead” and cannot be owned by any other players, essentially they are “lost” tokens on the blockchain. In Etheremon, some Mon species are super rare with just less than 50 Monsters exist, and that’s what makes some “dead” Mons very valuable.



So for Halloween, we decided to revive some of the “dead” monsters. Everyone will be racing to catch the monster again or more like reviving the monsters. This event is very special, so there will be only 7 monsters can be revived, and players will be racing to secure this opportunity.



To revive Mons, players will have to find wisp in the Adventure mode in four specific adventure sites. People can play in these adventures sites to find these wisps, thus far only 3 have been found. The event will last until either all the 7 wisps have been found or until the 31st of October. We released an event page on the Etheremon website. Oh, I almost forgot the wisps are called Spookaboos! Once players have their Spookaboo, they can use it to revive one of 13 hand-picked monsters from the monster pool.



We fell that this idea was perfect for Halloween and we don't think we will repeat this in the future.

Is there anything more that you would like to share with potential new members of the community?

I think the decentralized games are a very new concept that people might feel intimidated by it. We hope that we will convert more players to pick up a decentralized game and give it a try. What we suggest to everyone is to enter our Discord community, start asking questions as there will be someone or most of the time, many always ready to help. From to understand how blockchain works, blockchain gaming in general to every single detail about Etheremon, you will always find an answer.



Just come, join, don't be afraid and be ready to learn about something incredible. Don't miss out on the chance to be among the first of this new frontier.

It is exciting to see the future features that Etheremon wants to include in the game, and we are extremely anxious to see Etheremon on Decentraland, we thank Nedrick for sharing all this with us.



What do you think about Etheremon and it's new features? Let us know in comments below, and feel free to suggest any dapps that you want us to interview or review in the future.