After a year and a half of cracking the whip… I mean, hard work by our development team, I’m proud to announce the launch of BitBums, a crypto themed satirical PHP web based game.

Now, you may be thinking:

“A PHP web based game? What is this 1995? This sounds horrible!”

And, you are probably right.

BitBums is probably not the game for you.

It isn’t flashy. It doesn’t have animations. There are no exploding robots (yet), it isn’t available as an app, and it isn’t on a console.

BitBums is a passion project for those who enjoy:

Passive games you can play for a few minutes per day.

Clicking buttons that do very little except for making progress bars go up.

Using satire to make fun of your own cryptocurrency holdings.

Posting memes on in-game forums.

Using improvised weapons to fight other homeless nerds.

Putting everything on a blockchain for no reason.

Below average customer support!

What is BitBums?

BitBums is a classic tick based RPG where you earn energy each tick.

You can use that energy to do various tasks that level up your character, earn you money, or send an army of thousands of animated table top minis raging into a bloody battle on your behalf.

Set in the creatively named city of CryptoCity, which is nothing more than a collection of boxes beneath a San Francisco overpass, you take on the role of a young engineer and crypto enthusiast, slightly after Bitcoins peak.

During the peak, you quit your job as an overpaid engineer at a tech giant renowned for creepy tracking, sold your home and your shares and went all in on Bitcoin. At $20,000 per Bitcoin it was practically a steal.

At least, that’s what you used to tell yourself most nights, as you lay crying yourself to sleep in the alley behind a local coffee shop.

That was until you found CryptoCity! You came to find a group of like minded homeless crypto enthusiasts, BitBums if you will, that had built the makeshift city of your dreams!

Sure, it gets a little gross when it rains because the city is made of cardboard, but, the economy is run on a cryptocurrency called Bottlecaps, elections are held on the blockchain, and you can stay warm by the heat of your potato powered makeshift cryptocurreny mining rig! You have it all.

It’s up to you to decide what to do in CryptoCity. Maybe you’ll become the best pit fighter, fighting for the latest graphics cards. Maybe you’ll master mining rigs and help others fix theirs for a price. Or, perhaps you’ll take the path of glory and start a gang to engage in turf wars and oust the sketchy Mayor Braig Bright.

This is the bright future you saw for yourself — with only slightly more homelessness.

What the hell…?

Yes. It’s great isn’t? Like something out of a fever-dream.

You probably want more. You can read the FAQ’s here.

Why though?

I love PHP tick based games and they are a dying breed that aren’t as well represented in the mobile space. I think mobile games are plagued by microtransactions. I love satire. I think we should laugh at everything, especially ourselves. I’m fascinated by blockchains. The idea of a game fully on a blockchain isn’t possible yet, at least not in any usable way, so I thought it’d be great to make a hybrid game. Blockchain communities are some of the funniest and most meme filled places on the internet. That goes hand in hand with satire.

Above all else, I was looking to build the kind of game that I wanted to play. The types of games I missed, or the types of games I hoped would exist but never did.

A year and a half ago, I cashed out a significant amount of my savings, hired a junior developer and a comic book artist and began to make my crazy concept a reality.

On a Blockchain?

Yes.

At least, partially. BitBums won’t be fully decentralized but aims to be the first hybrid game to allow users to use blockchain based features in a stable environment that doesn’t cost them money every time they want to do anything.

Much Doge. Very Danger. Wow!

Tokens?

Yes. Check the FAQ.

Token Sale/ICO?

No. Why aren’t you just reading the FAQ?

Aren’t games just a blatant money grab?

…We’re in crypto, if this were a blatant money grab we’d have an ICO!

Mobile microtransaction games are decent money grabs, but, hiring an artist to hand draw graphics for an outdated style web game is probably not the best strategy to part you with your money.

Our FAQ also outlines some of the rules and strategies we are putting in place to prevent a pay-to-win culture.

MOAR?

More information will be released via our blog here on Medium and via our mailing list which you can join at https://bitbums.net/

We’ll be adding more updates and behind the scenes looks at the game over the coming weeks, including sharing more information about our private Alpha and your chance to win up to $25,000 worth of in-game items!