Chain of Alliance Beta Launch Brings ‘Ground Up’ Overhaul

Blockchain-powered role-playing game (RPG) Chain of Alliance has launched its beta version, making “massive changes” to its game systems and overhauling its visuals and UI.

“In general we’ve revamped most of the game for the better,” Chain of Alliance Marketing Lead Jorn Wisman told Decrypt. “We have made massive changes on our beta build vs the alpha build.”

Those changes include “reworked” game progression, combat, and crafting systems, a “redesigned” UI, and an updated quest system as well as “all new” animations, VFX and audio.

Chain of Alliance’s combat mechanics have been reworked “from the ground up,” Wisman said, with the aim of creating a flexible system that enables new skills and updates to be easily added. As well as ensuring that the game can be kept “fresh and exciting” with the addition of new classes, the rework also gives players more options for specialization while they embark on the character creation process.

A new Aspects mechanic, meanwhile, adds random properties to equipment, buffing the player’s stats and enabling more granular customization by engraving Runes on equipment with Aspects.

Skill mechanics have been tweaked to be more “purposeful,” Wisman said, adding that players now have the choice of using new Taunt, Shield and Block skills that add layers of play and counter-play to the game.

For example, the Taunt move forces the opposing team to attack the Taunting Hero, enabling one of the player’s other characters to heal or stack effects for a more devastating attack.

New art, animations and VFX have been added to give the game more visual polish. “The early version was heavily impacted by the limitations of the technology of a web game, but we are constantly trying to push it to the very edge of what’s possible,” Wisman told Decrypt, with improvements to the game’s designs and a complete overhaul of in-game battle animations helping to give it a look that’s “unique in the crypto games space.”

The team is particularly proud of the visual upgrades to the arenas, he added, noting that, “They are all vibrant and unique, making each battle that much more exciting.”

As well as refreshing the game’s graphics, the Chain of Alliance beta also overhauls its UI, optimizing its interface for computer browsers rather than mobile devices. “We have focused a lot on user experience and having a consistent style throughout the game,” Wisman said, adding that its combat is “a lot more interactive,” in order to help players make better informed decisions during gameplay.

That’s particularly important given the complex systems such as crafting and engraving that have been added to the game with its beta launch. “Overall, the UI is just a lot more intuitive, and easier to understand for our new players,” Wisman said.

What is Chain of Alliance?

Launched in February 2022, Chain of Alliance is an immersive turn-based, party-builder RPG, whose game world expands driven by the choices and actions from the community.

Heroes are the core asset of Chain of Alliance, created by players using components like the head, torso, and arms. Each component is imbued with unique attributes, and further customized through the Hero’s species, class assignments, the player’s choice of equipment, and the new Aspects and Engraving mechanics introduced in the beta launch.

Heroes can be minted as NFTs, with their progression recorded directly on the NFT. "We want to give traditional gamers that love RPG games the option to own their digital assets and not be chained to the developer as they are now," Chain of Alliance co-founder Simon Sorgenfrei told Decrypt.