Gods Unchained is a new blockchain-based trading card game. It follows the tradition of classic Trading Card Games (TCGs) like Magic the Gathering combined with crypto-collectibles and games like CryptoKitties. Combining them provides a powerful recipe where the result is greater than the sum of its parts. Already, the most desirable card was put for auction that fetched a cool 146 ETH or $60,000. That’s before the game was even launched. Welcome to Gods Unchained.

The Appeal of Crypto

The cards in the Gods Unchained game are represented as a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) which means unlike a cryptocurrency that aims for fungibility (all units of the currency being equivalent), the tokens here are unique and different from each other. Therefore, each card is somehow different from the every other card in the game and this can be shown on the blockchain. The data stored in the NFT is then used to provide the appropriate look and functionality for the cards inside the game.

Before we dive deeper, let’s first answer the question that is probably one we get the most often on this blog – why crypto? What benefits does the blockchain provide over a SQL database, as the question goes? The answer in the case of Gods Unchained and similar crypto-native in-game assets is quite simple – with the blockchain, you have true ownership of your assets in the game. In the case of Gods Unchained, this means you own your cards completely.

Once you acquire a digital card in the game, it is truly yours. No one, not even the team behind Gods Unchained can prevent you from trading that card, for example. The dynamic becomes similar to physical cards in a game like Magic The Gathering. As some of these assets can indeed become quite valuable in the future, having them on the blockchain means collectors know they truly own these assets. It is not just another entry in a database of a startup.

Gameplay Elements

Gods Unchained has everything gamers aspire to. The game has various strategic elements where players need to apply skill (i.e. it is not just random chance). Also, the game visuals are stunning – just go check those out yourself to be the judge. The game is free to play for the basic cards, so accessible to really anyone with an internet connection. Players compete from around the world in a very real sense.

For any advanced cards, players truly own their assets in their Ethereum wallets – not even Gods Unchained team can take that away from you. There is a precedence for a healthy secondary market for these digital assets that players can use even after launch.

Then finally there is real tournament play, with 20,000 tickets already sold out. The pot for the tournament currently stands at around $350,000. That’s real money with real players right there.

If you’re a trading card game enthusiast, you’ll probably love what Gods Unchained has to offer.

Technology

We already mentioned the killer graphics, but there is much more to the technology behind the Gods Unchained game than meets the eye on the website. We’re talking about the blockchain for gameplay of course.

There are various schools of thought here, but in our opinion, Gods Unchained strikes the right balance between on-chain and off-chain elements. This is because blockchains are not yet ready for prime-time scalable applications. We’ve seen that play out in games like CryptoKitties that can become popular and cause an Ethereum network wide congestion, driving up costs to play to significant levels.

In Gods Unchained, the gameplay is offline on centralized servers. This means if there is a popular ICO going on, then players don’t need to wait for 2 days for gas prices to normalize. Also, playing can be free and not pay a huge amount of money to the miners. However, the assets are still held on the blockchain in your personal wallet, so the rare cards are not sitting on a central server somewhere but under your ownership.

The team behind Gods Unchained already has some experience with this – they were the team behind Etherbots, which caused a stir during release but died down due to expensive on-chain gameplay. The team seems to have learned the lessons from that well, and implementing it in their technology behind Gods Unchained.

The VCs are Circling

The VCs are quite interested in the whole NFT space. CryptoKitties raised $12 million from the top venture capitalists in the world – Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz among others. Marketplaces like Rarebits and OpenSea have raised over $1 million to create marketplaces for all sorts of NFTs. Fuel Games has already raised a $2.4 million venture round.

In addition to venture funding, the company has sold over $1 million in pre-sale cards already, and still counting. This is all raised from real players who are interested in participating in the game, not just institutions. This really shows that players are ready to invest not just their time but their money into the game.

Check out Gods Unchained here. You can still buy pre-sale cards right now.