About the game and why we think you’ll love it!
Updated: Jun 25, 2021
A Twitter follower suggested we do a post on the game and gameplay, so we’re gonna do just that! Eventually, we hope to drop some video of one of our lunchtime play-testing group sessions, as well.
The Premise
The 7th Seal is a medieval tactical strategy game in which your goal is to claim the throne against 5 human and/or AI foes. The game will incorporate blockchain and NFT tech that will enable players to earn crypto by playing the game and/or making custom maps. Multiple game modes allow for single-player, hot-seat multiplayer, and asynchronous multiplayer.
The Story
The King is dead. Years ago, after the passing of his beloved Heir, he bestowed six seals to the noble houses. The 7th seal is held in trust by the king's Steward. Your claim to the throne is as strong, if not more so, than that of the other nobles. To claim it, you must gather the six seals under one banner by any means necessary. Only then will the Steward award the 7th. The fate of the realm is at stake. Claim the throne... or bend the knee!
The Tactical Strategy Wargame Part
You and each of your opponents start the game with a settlement, an army, and a builder. Each settlement supports two armies and one builder.
Build your second army at your village, clear a forest with your army and move the builder so he can build a farm next turn. Each farm you have supports an extra army that you must train at a village.
Builders can build farms up to 3 hexes away from their (or an ally's) settlement and upgrade farms to settlements as long as they are 3 hexes away from another settlement.
Forests are not passable, but both armies and builder units can take a turn to remove a forest.
Once the forests are gone it’s time to send our troops to war. Battles are deterministic without randomness in figuring out who wins or loses.
Now let’s continue the attack and try to take the enemy village for our own! Remember too that new troops are needed to fill in for the losses.
The Asynchronous Turn-Based Part
Turns will have a time limit. That time limit will determine how long the games last. Once all players submit their turn or the time limit has ended the turn is processed. Those that do not submit before the time has elapsed will forfeit their turn. Forfeit enough turns and you auto-surrender.
The Play-To-Earn Part
Each solo game played to completion and won will earn you a percentage of a newly minted token. You will need to earn these tokens because it costs at least 1 token to play a multiplayer game. Call it a buy-in maybe. The winner(s) get a percentage of the reward pool (total buy-in + a max of one new token that gets minted). In testing things out, it usually takes us 3 solo games to make a total of 1 token so we can enter a multiplayer game. The numbers are not all figured out yet, but it's well on its way.
The Mod-To-Earn Part
Map Making and Residual Income Potential
We have already covered this in another post, but I’ll detail it here so you don’t have to go searching.
Many modders like to build maps for their favorite games. We have decided to use map building as a crowdfunding solution as well as to reward modders for their efforts when their maps prove to be highly valued by the player community.
Here is how it works at this early stage:
A backer takes part in our NFT tile sale or buys tiles on a secondary marketplace.
They put their tiles together in a map configuration they think will be fun.
They test their map in solo gameplay to verify its playability.
Once they like their new map, they can call the genesis process in the builder. That feature burns those tiles and creates an ownership NFT and a map that is part of the official map atlas within the game when it’s live.
Maps within the Map Atlas are available to all players. When players choose a backer’s map from the atlas and play a game on it, a percentage of that game's tokens is passed through to the map’s NFT holder. Please read below for more information on game tokens.
Here is how it will work after the game is released:
Tiles are used to create maps in the same way, but instead of the genesis process automatically putting the map in the Map Atlas, copies of the map can be sold as NFTs to players directly.
Players who own the map NFT can start a game with that map. If a map is created with a special NFT (Rare Digital Vellum) it is included in the game’s default maps.
The most popular maps will see the most income. Because maps have owners we want to protect their ownership. If you own the map template NFT no one but you can configure a map more than 80-90% (we are not sure on the exact value yet) the same as your map.
The Collective Game World
We are not quite sure how we are going to do this yet, but we are envisioning all the maps within the Map Atlas as being one planet or one area of a planet, at least. As maps are developed and their popularity determined, I could see us using some of those maps in the solo player campaign mode. We will have to see how things go.
Good game for now and until next time,
~ Chadrick