Age of Rust Dev Update #14
TLDR: Wen game? This year. Migration to polygon is complete. Game ownership will be tied to a Privateer NFT. No microtransactions, no play to earn.
Greetings Age of Rust followers!
I hope you are all doing well. As the game developer for this exciting project, I just wanted to take a moment to give you all an update on the progress. I have been working hard behind the scenes to make the game more intuitive to understand, easier to play, and more engaging to play. I’ve been making great strides in creating the world, characters, and lore behind Age of Rust, filled with mysteries to uncover and challenges to conquer. Over the past few months, I’ve added new and improved gameplay mechanics to smooth out some of the rough edges around the earlier beta. I’m excited to share this journey with you and can’t wait for you to dive into the world of Age of Rust. Thank you for your continued support and patience as I work to make this game the best it can be.
The migration from Enjin to Polygon is now complete.
- Rustbits are now ERC20 Tokens on Polygon
- Mission Cards & Gold Cards are now on Polygon.
- Rustbits were airdropped to wallets on December 6th, 2022.
- Mission & Gold Cards were airdropped to wallets on Feb 2nd, 2023.
Gameplay Mechanics
If you participated in the beta test, you might recall some of the puzzles. While a few participants quickly figured them out, others struggled and desired more assistance. For instance, in the beta, you had to rotate a series of columns, locate a fuse, and insert it into the fuse box. However, there was limited guidance on how to escape the Temple Vault. This type of gameplay was once favored in early adventure games, but is no longer as popular in today’s adventure gaming community. These puzzles serve as the narrative puzzles in the game and are meant to guide the player through the levels as the story and gameplay advance. Now, these narrative puzzles are contextualized and offer help from NPC’s who provide more meaningful information about particular puzzles that are critical to progression.
Transactions are gone…
The alpha and beta versions of the game included some experiments with purchasing in-game items using Rustbits. However, many players were confused about buying items, not the items themselves or the purpose, but rather the transaction fee associated with the blockchain technology. To improve this situation, all game items and ownership are now tied to a single standard NFT called Privateer on the Polygon network, making it easier for players to get access to the game and all the items.
Players who purchased in-game items in the beta, will be getting a Privateer for free, airdropped to them at no cost. There’s a link in the discord announcement channel to the Privateer Reservation list, those marked “Free” are the qualifying wallets.
Play To Earn will be gone in the next release
One of the elements that has been removed from the upcoming release of the game is the reward-per-every-puzzle game mechanic. While it was an interesting experiment, it proved that player motivations were not aligned with the design of the game. The focus was less on exploration and adventure and more on camping around puzzles to earn a reward at any cost. The game wasn’t designed to be played for this aspect, so ultimately, I made the decision to remove all the every-puzzle-reward gameplay.
However, there are still 8 hidden crypto bonus puzzles in the game, these can be stumbled upon by having all 8 mission cards. Also, the two hidden treasure hunts are still in the game as well. Neither the bonus puzzles or the treasure hunts are required to play through the game.
What’s Next…
Coming next for the project is wrapping up development, putting together a new game trailer, redesigning the website, releasing Privateers and then finally, releasing Age of Rust.
