July 2021 Development Update!
over 2 years ago
– Fri, Jul 30, 2021 at 11:27:07 PM
We just doubled our registered players from 10.000 to ca 20.000 in just over a week and we are excited to see so many new faces from all around the world popping up into the game!
We would like to talk about a few exciting new changes happening to the game and our whole ecosystem over the course of August and September.
Alpha 6 Preview
As we promised, Alpha-6 will be our biggest and best game update to date, therefore a lot of time goes into the new mechanics, brand new algorithms and overall game flow.
Just a small little teaser of what’s about to come and we will go into much more detail about each new change in the near future!
Starting in the south in a small village, players will venture deeper into the very first continent to eventually join N-Corp.
The world you know is no more. As we approach the end of our Alpha phase we are putting everyone into the game‘s brand new intro levels.
Alpha-6 is expected to go live mid-August!
New Mechanics!
Replicating („catching“)
When you encounter wild Chainmons, you can try to use your Replicator device. If you are successful, a level 5 copy of the Chainmon is added to your global storage system and you can then add it to your Squad, train and increase their strength. Every time a Chainmons gets replicated there is a tiny percentage chance that it becomes a "shadow" variant...
Replicating consumes one replicator charge.
Storage and Squad management
After you replicated a few Chainmons and you are ready to battle, you should add them to your Squad. Assemble, build, change and swap out your Chainmons for any occassion on the fly.
Global storage allows you to access your whole collection from anywhere anytime.
Species re-design.
Every Chainmon species is unique. And we are taking this one step further from what you might be used to from other monster tamer games!
Every Chainmon now has a specific moveset, a pre-defined set of abilities that get stronger over time!
E.g. Chipleaf has 3 abilities and 1 "ultimate" ability.
They will always keep the same abilities but you can upgrade them through e.g. levelling to add new active/passive effects, additional damage and traits over time!
As we are releasing new Chainmons on a regular basis, every time the whole competitive "meta" of the game changes completely!
Inventory
You can see all your received items as well as all NFTs connected to your account in-game. Use medicine to heal your wounds after a battle, collect and store various resources and craft rare materials (crafting coming in Beta later)
Resources in the game
Let's talk about resources. What are they actually?
Well, throughout your journey in Ancora (the world of Chainmonsters) you will complete quests, search for treasures and unlock special rewards. In order to increase your Chainmon's strength you will find special materials and resources that you can then give and/or feed to your Chainmons.
Chainmon strength
Increasing a Chainmon's strength happens through multiple mechanics:
battling wild encounters
unlocking Chainmon "potential"
Upgrading abilities and traits
Wild encounters
The traditional way of battling enough enemies to gain experience points and getting stronger over time.
Chainmon Potential
Every Chainmon starts off with Level 5 if replicated from a wild encounter.
As you gain experience, you will hit certain limits that you need to overcome. The "potential" of a Chainmon needs to be unlocked. This usually happens through the use of resources.
Example:
Your Chipleaf is Level 5 and you receive experience through battles until Level 20.
At Level 20 you need to unlock additional Potential. This process usually costs a bunch of resources and gets more expensive over time. Crafting lower level materials into higher level materials will play a big role when dealing with late stage Chainmons.
While story quests, world treasures and rewards will give you enough materials to get started, you might want to checkout the weekly challenges, boss battles and special event encounters to gain more resources that you can then spend on additional Chainmons.
If you don‘t feel like leveling your Chainmons yourself you can take a look at the marketplace and trade with other players directly.
There are 4 different rarities when it comes to our various resources and every Chainmon species - depending on their element - needs different resources to grow stronger.
The lower rarities only exist in the game while - through crafting - you can combine them into epic and legendary materials that exist as NFTs on Flow. Those are especially rare and required to unlock later stage potentials of any Chainmon and might end up becoming highly sought after on the marketplace.
More on that in the future..
Upgrading Abilities
As every Chainmon has a specific move-set, each ability can be made stronger over time. Whenever you unlock new potential, you also gain access to a few more ability levels.
Abilities add a multiplier to your DMG output.
E.g. „Flamethrower“ Level 1 does 100% dmg, level 2 does 114% dmg etc.
This scales up to e.g. 400% at level 100 and is only possible thanks to brand new battle and stats algorithms to be revealed shortly ;)
Marketplace Launch next week!
Our marketplace is finally being launched end of next week!
We need to do some minor changes to the way you interact and store your NFTs but we will send out instructions for that purpose early next week!
…
Well..
There is one more MAJOR change we haven‘t talked about. But… let‘s wait until we are a bit closer to Alpha 6 before we reveal this…
Make sure to stay up to date with our development through Discord:
Alpha 5 Launch on Monday! Steam available in preview
almost 3 years ago
– Thu, Jul 08, 2021 at 07:12:24 AM
It is time! Apologies for the slow blog posts but we are reeeeaaaallllyyyyy close on multiple updates, the game, the marketplace, beta and marketing preparations, game scaling etc etc.
And the best part? This month is full of updates!
Starting off with Alpha 5.
Alpha 5 Launch Monday 12th of July
This Monday 10am CET we are launching Alpha-5 to the public. Featuring the Season Pass, Flow Blockchain mainnet switch, various buffs and nerfs to abilities, monsters and elemental reactions, improved battle feedback, 3D battles, 3D player-camera, and much much more!
Season Pass
Each Season Pass - including the Alpha Season Pass - has various levels to unlock over time. For this special one, we have 25 alpha-exclusive rewards in store for you - divided over 25 unlockable season pass levels.
Later Season Passes will always feature a 100% FREE tier in addition to the PREMIUM tier. This enables everyone to unlock certain time-exclusive rewards like cosmetics, rare resources and additional items even if they are not technically owning the full season pass. Of course, the Premium tier will always have some special items so that it's worth it to unlock.
In order to transition to this state, we are now introducing the season pass system to the game.
Once Alpha-5 is available - Monday 10am CET to be exact - you can start completing the quests, earn Season Pass EXP and unlock/claim your rewards.
All Season Pass items are NFTs so you can trade them freely with each other. Keep in mind, not all items can be utilized in-game yet though.
Featuring: First 5 Season Pass Tiers and 3D Battles + Flow mainnet switch
Marketplace Launch: mid-July
Global search, overview and proper sorting for a real marketplace experience.
Alpha 6: First week of August
Our LAST Alpha Update - this one is really important!
Featuring ALL Core Game Mechanics including but not limited to
All 25 Season Pass Levels/NFTs
Catching/Taming wild Chainmons
Squad/Storage System
Rename your Chainmon
Inventory
Daily/Weekly Challenges
Localized Quests
TVs (Trainning Values)
various quality of life changes
one more large area on the first island.
Beyond Alpha
We have spent the last couple of weeks and months on working on our core game systems. From massive multiplayer, to battles, to open world gameplay.
Thanks to every single one of you, we were able to gather an overwhelming amount of feedback that did influence the way we designed the game, mechanics and future features.
we are currently improving our level design workflows to enable much more larger areas and easier plus faster internal processes.
After our last Alpha update in early August when all (basic) game mechanics are implemented, we are transitioning into full content production mode.
Our art and design team will be spending all of August building levels, characters, quests and visual elements. At the same time our engineers and game designers are going through all existing features, polishing every little bit and piece of the full user experience to make every part of Chainmonsters visually appealing and enjoyable. This also includes a refurbished Quest-UI of course.
We are scheduling at least 30+ days for the last Alpha Update. So once Alpha-6 is available you can expect to have at least 30 days to unlock the remaining Season Pass rewards - and test the game in the process. (Due to moving beta marketing/launch schedules we expect a bit longer than 30 days actually)
And don't worry - obtaining the EXP required for the full Pass is not that hard nor does it take too much time away.
Beta Launch Window
Well - in our Kickstarter campaign we estimated Q3 2021 for Beta launch. This is actually happening. As you may know, we are working closely with our partner Flow to make Beta launch truly huge and amazing.
Not only will Beta mean that the game will be available through Steam (Early Access), Google Play and the iOS AppStore (no longer Testflight!) publicly - but also that anyone can download it for free(!).
Over the past 10 months, we have been working with Unity Technologies on implementing their AAA-scaling solution Multiplay (Apex Legends, Fall Guys, etc) https://unity.com/products/multiplay
Our game servers have been built to handle thousands of simultaenous players with ease. Multiplay takes this to millions of players potentially. We will talk about this in detail in a shared blog post in the near future.
When Chainmonsters hits the public stores and can be downloaded and enjoyed for free all across the world, we want to be prepared.
We are currently scheduling the Beta launch with our partners but we are currently estimating the Open Beta to launch in September/October.
There will be a "Road to Beta" blog/video series starting in August featuring various parts of the game from explainign the economy, monster stats, battles, technology and so much more.
Beta Content
From a content POV we are working on making the first full island available which includes many unique areas, Chainmons, quests, items and story plots.
If you have joined our "Early Access" task force then you will receive an early preview of the Beta content through Steam during August. Please note this does NOT give early access to NFTs nor items.
(For interesting parties that want to help please join our Discord and ask in the appropriate channel)
Alpha-4 just launched, trading enabled and more!
almost 3 years ago
– Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 01:54:48 AM
Alpha 4
We are incredible excited to bring you the next game update, Alpha-4! This update includes our brand new battle system, a reworked quest system and many smaller bug fixes and tweaks that makes the game more stable and hopefully more enjoyable than ever before!
Kickstarter backers can now start trading their Kickstarter rewards with other players. Soon, most likely with Alpha-5, the same will be true for your Alpha-exclusive Season Pass rewards.
In the past couple of weeks and months we have been listening to your feedback and after so much internal testing we came to the conclusion that our game world needs to be bigger. WAY bigger!
3X as big as the current levels to be exact.
As every level in the game is completely hand crafted from the very first ground tiles, to the grassy patches to the decals and details on almost every piece of the world, the game design and creation of each and every level takes a pretty long time even on the current scale.
We are constantly optimizing our game flows and processes though and there is a new experimental level design approach coming up which should work out reeeeeaaalllyyyyy well ;)
Kickstarter rewards/surveys
There are still about ~70 people left that have not filled out their backerkit surveys.
While there is still enough time left before we do physical shipping, we highly encourage everyone who has not filled out their surveys yet to do so!
Since the production of the artbook and other elements requires us to be much more further down the line of development of the game, we are currently expecting shipping to happen closer to main launch in early 2022! However, there will be a visual update to the Chipleaf plushie very soon... ;)
Special Shoutout to Discord user Cookie!
Thanks to Discord user Cookie we were able to upgrade our Discord server to Level 2!
PS: Please join our Discord server to stay up to date with day to day developments, exclusive news and engaging with our community!
https://discord.gg/ft9g5bsqFh
Alpha 3 patch notes and launch date
almost 3 years ago
– Tue, May 11, 2021 at 07:07:47 PM
Hi everyone!
We are officially launching Alpha version 3 on Monday 17th of May on iOS, Android and PC/Mac simultaenously.
This update will reset your progress so that we can verify that the quest system is now 100% stable.
Patch Notes
Fixed localization issues on Android (defaults to device language now)
Added first battle algorithms for stats, damage and the elemental system
fixed monster outline not rendering during battles on mobile
enabled battles again
added slight camera zoom on mobile and devices >16:9 ratio
added animated monsters to battle
fixed various bugs in quest system
added basic sfx/music
disabled various settings on mobile
added colliders to NPCs and objects
replaced placeholder portals with trigger areas to change between levels
added tutorial area to the very first level
tweaked dialogue
smaller tweaks and adjustments
Developer Comment
As many have realized the battle system in Alpha 1 and Alpha 2 was pretty bare bones due to the fact that it was added last and only exists as a super basic version on the server. The upcoming Alpha 3 is changing that by introducing proper monster stats, stat algorithms, speed dependency and preparations for our elemental system!
What is going to set our battle system apart from other monster tamer games is a combo-based elemental system:
Every Chainmon species belongs to one of 8 elements - combining/chaining two attacks one after the other creates strong and impactful elemental reactions. So assembling your squad and using/swapping your Chainmons dynamically will eventually be a challenge.
For example - using a nature ability and following up with a fire attack, will create the "Burning" reaction which causes the enemy Chainmon to take fire damage over time (for a few turns).
This elemental-combo system is scheduled for Alpha 4.
Verify that you received your digital Kickstarter rewards
about 3 years ago
– Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 06:30:53 PM
Hi there!
We have distributed digital rewards including Alpha Access to about 444 backers (out of ~750!) so far.
If you do not see your digital rewards here, make sure to check the following:
Did you previously export your rewards to VIV3?
Then you will need to wait for an announcement from VIV3 which enables you to transfer your e.g. Alpha Access into your game account. Support/Questions here; https://discord.gg/69TZmCP8Uy
Did you fill out this survey already (ORIGINAL KICKSTARTER BACKERS ONLY)?
https://form.typeform.com/to/DnGlfFDg - If not please do so now, and wait for 24 hours before checking back again - ONLY IF YOU ARE AN ORIGINAL BACKER THAT PARTICIPATED IN OUR KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN IN 2020!
If you did the survey previously and you have not exported them to VIV3 previouslythen please get in touch with oursupport
Claiming your Alpha Access
Once you have your Alpha Access in your inventory you are all set for now!
Shortly before Alpha starts we will unlock a way to claim your "Alpha Access" item for a "Kickstarter Badge" and Game Access + Season Pass.
Alpha Launch
The Alpha is currently in review by Steam, iOS and Android platforms and will be available starting next week! (Unless any platform requests a change/fix/etc, we will let you know once we have a final launch date in advance!)