When it comes to gaming, certain genres are always in vogue. Shooter RPGs. Survival games. Immersive action-adventure odysseys focused on exploration and discovery. And, of course, battle-based games that revolve around towering fighting machines known as mecha.
This isn’t a surprise, of course. Talking robotics with cannons for arms have broad appeal, as evidenced by the success of the Transformers franchise, a series that has generated $4.86 billion at the global box office. Making it the 13th-highest-grossing movie franchise of all time.
But what happens when mecha enters the metaverse? That’s a question a new blockchain-based gaming project wants to answer.
Mecha-verse Massacre
An adrenaline-pumping ARPG (Action Role-Playing Game) that leverages digital currency and NFTs to furnish players with endless earning opportunities, Mecha Morphing is set in a vast virtual world that represents Earth circa 2107.
The climate doomsayers have been vindicated: the world is deluged by biblical floods, brutal snowstorms and searing heat waves. In this unforgiving milieu, a tyrant named Sarin has ascended to the throne. A sort of futuristic Leopold, Sarin has amassed precious resources (metals, fossil fuel, etc) for himself and his feudal lords while waging a cruel campaign against the general populace. Just to underscore his villainy, ol’ Sarin has an army of mass-produced cyborgs to do his bidding too.
Luckily, a cast of cyberpunk rebels are fronting up to Sarin’s despotic regime, sourcing and trading natural resources and the mecha they create. Players in this nightmarish metaverse, then, have a glimmer of hope: the more materials they can accrue, the more skills, armour and weapons they can find, the stronger their characters will become. Play-to-earn (P2E) opportunities abound, with gamers able to earn financial rewards for their exploits under Sarin’s callous dictatorship.
Battles, of course, constitute a major part of the game – and players improve their characters’ stamina with every victory over opposing mobs and cyborgs. Skirmishes are AI-generated based on the combatants’ stats and health (as verified by Chainlink), as well as the random attributes of the environment in which the fighting takes place. Mecha Morphing’s developers have also intuited that PvP (player vs player) will be implemented in the future, whereupon gamers can challenge other rebels to duels.
In the initial roll-out though, the main action will consist of PvE (player vs environment), arena battles, bounty mode (complete tasks to earn prizes) and looting, where characters launch raids on regions that contain valuable resources. It’s also possible to “forge” weapons and armour by assembling the necessary materials to produce a powerful weapon that can then be wielded on the battleground. With virtually all items tokenized as NFTs (including land), players are free to trade them on the marketplace.
Thus, a talented and enterprising player could create a mini-economy based purely on upgrading characters, winning battles, and selling coveted assets and mecha in the marketplace for profit. If a player is lucky enough to acquire a land NFT – and the terrain is rich in resources – the token-holder might alternatively elect to trade materials while retaining the land itself as a long-term investment. You see, land NFT token-holders get to collect the resources the land produces regularly. That said, the terrain can lose value if plunderers successfully loot its valuable materials – which can, in turn, be used to forge better weapons.
Mecha Market
Projects like Mecha Morphing seek to combine appealing graphics and engaging gameplay with the profit-generating potential of DeFi protocols – principally trading, in this case.
Thus, away from the scorched-earth landscape and skyscraper-tall cyborgs, an internal market facilitates purchases using the in-game currency, $MMC. With $MMC, players can purchase gacha boxes, mystery chests that hold materials, tokens, mighty mecha, and potions. As mentioned, they can also score valuable materials from other players.
Another nifty element of the game is its achievement system, which tracks how much the player has earned during his lifetime and how many levels they have reached. When a certain threshold is crossed, the player is rewarded with a status that confers bragging rights and unlocks improved earning calculations.
Mecha Morphing is set to launch its testnet on December 27, with an IDO and mainnet launch expected in Q1 of 2022. Having received investment from a slew of high-profile blockchain VCs (Rarestone Capital, Innovion and Shima Capital to name a few), the ARPG is looking like a strong bet to become a major player in the fast-growing mecha-verse ecosystem.