This article was originally written on Medium.

Forget everything you know about online gaming. Enter: EtherBots. This new game on the Ethereum blockchain is trying to kickstart a new era of blockchain gaming, with dynamic gameplay and beautiful visuals to go along with it.

But what’s so special about it?

True ownership of in-game items

With the explosion that was CryptoKitties, we saw people shelling out thousands upon tens of thousands of dollars so they could get their hands on their very own blockchain kitty. The proof-of-concept showed that there was an immense appeal for what seems to just be some code and a visual overlay. More importantly, however, it showed that for the very first time, people were able to truly own their virtual items using Ethereum’s ERC721 token protocol.

The only thing was, once you got your kitty, there wasn’t really much you could do with it aside from sexy-time with another cat so you could have more cats. And that was about it.

EtherBots brings ownership of assets on the blockchain to the next level with the ability to pit your collectible robot against others, while collecting parts you win from battle and leveling them up so you can smash the next bot that dares to challenge you.

A sneak peak at the planned perk tree

Dynamic blockchain gameplay

The EtherBots team spared no expense in ensuring that they were creating the most intuitive gaming experience possible for their players.

Complete with perk trees, various movesets, elemental attributes for strengths/weaknesses and a sneaky battle style, EtherBots isn’t your typical mindless hack-and-slash. Mental capacity is required to make your way to the top as you try to read up on game knowledge and predict what your opponent’s next move will be.

Though not much is known about the battle system just yet, the potential is there for a thriving competitive scene to form around this game.

Free marketplace

With total ownership of your bots comes the ability to do with them as you please. Coming from the land of RuneScape, it’s an amazing breath of fresh air for me to be able to trade my in-game items for real-world money. On launch will be an open marketplace where buyers and sellers will be able to trade their robot parts and Ether. It will be interesting to see how much some of the rarer parts will go for, like this golden unicorn.

NotCricket offering some friendly advice

Community and developer interaction

A lot of the time when people talk about games, it’s mostly either about the gameplay or the graphics. But in the ever growing world of online gaming, everyone knows that a game’s true success comes from the relationship between the developers and the community.

It’s evident by looking at the [Discord server](Discord server) that the developers care a lot about their player base, answering questions and accepting criticism with open arms. NotCricket, a highly active dev there, also frequents the subreddit, providing Redditors there with support.

Though communication is not a one-way street. Players are also encouraged to provide feedback and offer suggestions for future game content. In fact, there’s a competition currently underway, with the grand prize being the opportunity to design a brand-new robot part, in collaboration with the dev team.

With the launch date under a week away, it’s looking pretty good for EtherBots and the team from here on out. Only time will tell if it can propel blockchain gaming into the mainstream.

If you’re interested in looking more into what EtherBots is about, take a look-see.