Steemgg Interview: Gates of Steem and @phonebox
Hi Everyone, the Voting of Steemgg x Steemmonsters Game Jam has started! Visit our voting page and place your vote on your three favourite games!
During these 7 days of voting, we will be showcasing each of the games that was submitted, so everyone can learn a bit more about the games, and a bit more on the developers themselves.
Our first entry of the game jam is Gate of Steem by @phonebox. It is a RPG based on two cards in the Steemmonsters universe, Zintar Mortalis the Summoner, and the Frozen Soldier.
Game Review
In the game, you are Zintar Mortalis, and you basically have to smash through the Frozen soldiers coming your way as you progress across the screen. There are two spells you can use, either a generic green magic arrow spell triggered by the left mouse button, or the fireball spell triggered by the right mouse button. The fireball is more powerful, but its angled downwards, so you need to jump up for it to hit the ground enemies. It also takes more mana. When you run out of mana, you can’t do anything until it recharges, so don’t go charging into your enemies when mana is low, or else you will get slaughtered by the frozen soldiers.
The most innovative thing about this game is it’s interfacing between the game and the Steem blockchain. In particular, @phonebox decided to add two features into the game that is tied to steemit. Firstly, the comment displayed at the start of the game is the latest comment that is left on the comment post here. Secondly, to trigger the appearance of the boss fight, there needs to be enough votes in the boss post. This creates a dynamic interaction between the games and the players through Steemit, something that we think is pretty brilliant.
You can find more details about the game on @phonebox’s own post here
Game Dev’s Interview
Now that we know more about his game, let’s get to know @phonebox a little bit better! We have interviewed @phonebox to talk about the game, game development, and how he feel about Steemgg:
Steemgg: Did you enter as a team or solo? If as a team, is this the same team you always have when you develop your games? Who’s in your team and what does each person do?
@phonebox: I entered the jam in solo, on my projects I usually take on a coding role, I have experience in Unity, but mostly in VR and 3D stuff. I enjoy designing games, writing scripts, I also find satisfaction in writing low-level code in high level languages like webocket tcp networking in Unity, so I thought it would be a good challenge for myself to make a game with Steem integration as my first blockchain project. And it was :)
Steemgg: How did you come up with the idea for this game?
@phonebox: The first thing I knew for sure was that I want to prove that Steem can have an impact on gameplay. So I thought - what game type would benefit from blockchain? Besides collectibles which Steemmonsters already is, I thought of decisions and therefore RPGs.
Despite I am starting to get familiar with Blender nowadays as well, I knew I won't have the time to do everything for a 3D RPG, and there was already a great graphic pack for Steem Monsters so I thought I will use that!
And that is how I came up with a 2D RPG which displays messages in game and changes based on the number of votes for posts.
In the long run I think there is still a huge room for improvements like making decisions which have bigger impact and saving your character for example, but I think I have successfully proven that this kind of integration is possible.
Steemgg: What is the most fun or memorable part for you in this game jam?
@phonebox: So as I mentioned above I really wanted to get the Steem integration working. So when I was testing it for the first time (to simply display the latest comment) I played it and it displayed a different name, not my test comment.
I double checked and everything should have been working so I checked the thread and someone was already commenting there :) Steemit is great!
Steemgg: Are you a professional game dev or hobbyist? How long have you been doing it?
@phonebox: Next to my full time job I was looking into Unity for a while, but I really started in 2017, I wanted to make a VR game - disclaimer, your first project should absolutely not be a VR game if you start game development. So I worked exclusively on that game and released it late 2017. Since then I have worked on multiple projects which is challenging next to an 8 hour job, but I always find it fun!
Steemgg: What is the hardest part in being an Independent Game Dev? What is the best part? And what is your most unforgettable experience as a game dev?
@phonebox: For me usually the hardest is the art, I am not the artist type, but most of the times I am working alone (with some exceptions :) ) and therefore I learn a lot of new stuff. I think it is very healthy for everyone to at least do a bit of the other's work so you can get a good perspective. This time I learnt to use Krita, a bit of Gimp and the new 2d bone features of unity which I detail in my post about the game jam. However the best tool for graphics for me is paint.net, that program is really suitable for a programmer if you know what I mean.
Additionally of course deadlines are always a big challenge, with the one week jam especially...
The best part is that I can freely set myself a challenge and if I complete it, it is for myself, not for someone else.
I think the best feeling for me was to see the whole thing what I imagined actually working. And of course hearing about that people are actually playing it!
Steemgg: What is your favourite video game, and what would you improve about it if you call the shots?
@phonebox: My all time favorite is Starcraft 2. I think the game is literally perfect, the one change I would have made is more of a business decision. Starcraft basically started e-sports, but could not keep up with it, maybe an early free edition or getting somehow better coverage would have been better, but still I love that game.
My other favourites include Dark Souls, Diablo 2 and Eve Online
Steemgg: What do you think of Steemgg as a platform and how do you think it can be improved?
@phonebox: I like Steemgg a lot, it plays my game better than any other HTML platform I tried. (really, there were some issues on itch which did not appear on steemgg) I think getting more content (which I can obviously see you are working on) will help get more people involved and I hope it will kick-start steemgg's economy.
Thanks @phonebox for your valuable opinion on our platform, and thank you for sharing what it’s like to be an independent Game dev. We hope to see more of your game on our platform in the future!
cheers. I like this interview.
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