The game is based on this design for a number of reasons. Our goal is to leverage the power of the EVM while at the same time mitigating any potential inconvenience which comes along with that. At present, both our prototype dungeon and our base crafting contract require just two transactions — one to initiate the sequence and one to confirm. (Something we’re considering but which isn’t yet part of our core design is the ‘chunking’ of regions within a dungeon so that tactics can be set every n floors, although we’re first and foremost aiming for user-friendliness, which means as few transactions as possible. More on this below.)

Tactics

Tactics selections include:

My stance: [aggressive].

I prefer [melee combat].

I will [kick down] locked doors when no key is present.

When low on health, I will [begin my ascension to safety], [unless I am closer to the exit portal].

When hungry and low on food, I will [begin my ascension to safety] [unless I am closer to the exit portal].

Your tactics, your equipment, and a bit of RNG (luck!) determine the outcome of your dungeon run. We aim for our core design to be both fast in terms of live interaction as well as accessible to casual players.

(As you might’ve noticed, we’re designing the game with mobile players in mind. Our first release will be based on Phaser, with native wrapper apps available for iOS and Android shortly after release.)

🍞 > 🌽

RNG

For our beta release, we’ll be using future block hash for RNG, with calculations performed using a dice analogy (D20). This means that our initial dungeon contract requires minimal input from the user. Further, as a technical limitation of this type of RNG, the maximum possible loot value for any individual dungeon run will be capped at 5 ETH (correction: 3 ETH, or the current block reward at the time of this writing). Without this limit, it would be profitable for miners to manipulate the outcome of the game rolls.

In the future, however, we are very interested in state channels. Here’s the important bit:

State channels are basically two-way pathways opened between two users that want to communicate with each other in the form of transactions. Each participant in the channel signs these transactions with his private key to ensure that they are undeniably true and authorized. These channels are off-chain and private, known only to its participants, which means they allow for instant and anonymous transactions within them. These channels also have a limited lifespan which is predetermined based on time or amount of transactions carried out. Participants can also close their channel by providing the last updated state of transactions to the blockchain.

State channels will enable us to facilitate on-the-fly tactics changes without delay as well as other near-real-time game elements which simply wouldn’t be possible without them.

In the end, the results are the same: