A Minecraft clone on the Somnia blockchain testnet called Chunked puts every in-game action on the blockchain—from a player’s movement to every block placed, mined, and crafted.
Creator MSquared, a division of metaverse tech builder Improbable, says this is the first of a number of blockchain experiments as the firm looks to see how far it can push the boundaries of crypto gaming.
Playing the game is a smooth experience, even with all the on-chain hooks, as there isn’t noticeable lag when placing or mining a block. That said, some issues can arise when crafting with blocks momentarily disappearing from a player's inventory. Plus, the game world’s borders are fairly small, significantly reducing the infinite sandbox experience of the real Minecraft.
It's Chunk'in time! Our on-chain MMO Sandbox is now live - Every block placed, mined, or crafted is a verifiable event on the @Somnia_Network blockchain ⛏️ pic.twitter.com/k2GTxBJf1H
MSquared CEO Rob Whitehead told Decrypt that while it’s still in a “tech demo” state, the game is designed to be a true Web3 game—not just a Web2 game with NFTs “bolted on the side.”
Whitehead explained that Chunked doesn’t have a traditional server backing it, with everything being supported by the Somnia testnet. As such, if MSquared decided to stop supporting the game, it would still exist on-chain forever and could be picked back up by the community to continue development.
“All of the world data of Chunked and all [of its] logic is on Somnia, so it's free to be interacted with and read from indefinitely,” Whitehead said. “The logic of Chunked is a series of on-chain smart contracts that will be open-sourced. The community can either use the existing world data on-chain, or deploy their own contracts and make their own totally separate fork of the world with different rules.”
Get crafting in Chunked! Image: Decrypt screenshot
This isn’t anything new, he added, pointing to the autonomous worlds movement that has attempted to put gaming worlds on-chain for these exact reasons. Dark Forest is a primary example of this in play, as a space exploration game that puts everything on-chain and takes advantage of zero-knowledge proofs to maintain mystery.
CCP Games’ upcoming Eve Frontier—a survival-centric spinoff from Eve Online—will do much the same with Ethereum-based architecture.
Ethereum-based massively multiplayer online (MMO) space survival game Eve Frontier will host a 10-day free trial period starting on Friday, April 11.
Open until April 21, free trial players will get to explore the universe, building and commanding ships and attempting to survive in a game in which the world “literally wants to kill you,” according to CCP Games CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson.
The Remnant Access trial coincides with the beginning of the game’s third phase, a 60-day period in which...
“The challenges right now have been chains (especially layer-1s) just haven't had the raw performance to handle large-scale real time games like this, with most projects being much simpler games with limited appeal,” Whitehead said.
Recently, a Crossy Road clone on the MegaETH public testnet went viral as every in-game action was recorded on-chain. As with Chunked, it could only be pulled off because of a new era of extremely high-performance networks emerging; the Ethereum mainnet certainly would not have been up for the task.
“Right now we're running on testnet, learning what new kinds of on-chain games are possible,” Whitehead said. “We'd love to see this evolve into a persistent on-chain voxel world in mainnet, which is owned and evolved by a community of co-creators.”
Somnia is expected to hit mainnet sometime this year. On this path, MSquared plans to roll out a series of other on-chain experiments, with the most successful tests due to become “full commercial projects” once Somnia fully launches onto mainnet.
Nexpace, a blockchain company backed by South Korean gaming giant Nexon, announced Thursday that its Web3 expansion of the popular MapleStory franchise will launch on May 15.
The new game, MapleStory N, will blend the franchise's traditional 2D side-scrolling gameplay with crypto assets on the Avalanche blockchain, allowing players to own and trade in-game assets on-chain. The studio has launched its own dedicated Avalanche L1 chain called Henesys, which went live in April.
"The launch of MapleS...
Popular mobile game Flappy Bird launched in the Epic Games Store for Android this week, but the game’s latest reboot doesn’t contain any crypto elements—despite plans to launch a token tied to the now-shuttered Telegram version.
The tap-to-flap game maintains its classic mode that asks users to navigate a pixelated bird through a continuous field of pipes, as well as introduces a quest mode in the “Web-2 only” release.
“The Flappy Bird app available on Epic Games Store will never have any Web3...
Gaming giant Ubisoft announced Wednesday the launch of its Decentralized Verification Network, or DVN, a blockchain-based system designed to secure digital asset transfers across multiple blockchain platforms.
The maker of popular games like Assassin's Creed, Just Dance, and Far Cry collaborated with LayerZero to leverage its interoperability protocol, allowing gamers to move digital assets seamlessly across Ethereum, Solana, Polygon and more than 130 other blockchains.
"With the launch of the D...