Steem Knights - A new game on Steem Blockchain

For the past few days, I have been reading many articles about Steem Knights game. The game got released today. I did get a chance to explore the game and play a few games. I would like to review the game a little bit based on the 3 games that I have played so far. I played two games for free and 1 game by spending 1 STEEM as a bet. It was indeed a great experience. I'm not going to repeat the same information they have on their website about this game. I would like to share the information from my perspective and what I have observed.

I have to first say kudos to the game team for releasing it on multiple platforms directly during the launch of the game. That's awesome work there. The game is not yet available in Google Play Store. But there is an option available to pre-register for the game so that we will be notified when the game is released. I'm damn sure that lots of efforts have been involved in planning how the game should be.

Gameplay

The gameplay is really good, I have just played only 3 games so far but I feel that the concept is really good. One good thing about the game is the strategy in the game. First of all, the gameplay looks like a chessboard where we protect our king. Not all the chess coins are involved in the game but the concept has been taken a little bit from Chess. The layout looks like a chessboard and we have players in our side and opponent players on the opposite side. At the beginning of the game, we are given three options before the start of the game.

If you look at the board, there are a total of 14 slots or units given to each player. Out of which, one slot is taken by the King and another is taken by the trap. So, there are totally 12 other units in the game.

Placing the King

We can decide where to place the king. There is no rule that we should be placing the king only in the center or something. Based on the safe location we place the king, we have to move the other players during the game place to plan the strategy well.

The above is the first option where you are asked to place your king. King is the ultimate thing in the game. If we don't place the king in the proper place and if the opponent reaches our king and try to fight with the King, we lose the game. For the past two days, I was able to easily reach out to opponent's king and win the game. No matter how many units you have, if the king is attacked by the opponents, you lose the game. This is unique gameplay. All that matters in the game is luck and strategy.

Placing the Traps

In the game, you are given one trap that you can place in any of the slots. The traps are very powerful. If any opponent unit reaches the place where the traps are placed, they immediately die.

The traps can be placed anywhere in the 14 slots allocated to a player. Some people keep it near the king and some people keep it far away from the king. It all depends on the strategy and luck.

Shuffle Knights

The next option given to us before the start of the game is to shuffle our Knights. As I mentioned above, after placing the king and trap, there are a total of 12 Knights available for us to strategically play the game. By default, there is a formation given to us. We can choose to retain the formation given to us or shuffle the position of the Knights.

There are a total of 3 types of Knights in the game.

• Sword Attack
• Bow and Arrow
• Magic Attack

Four knights of each type are given to us during the start of the game. They are automatically placed in some positions, if we wish to shuffle them to reposition, we can do it before the timer ends.

Timer

There is a time in the game that keeps running for everything. It starts as soon as we enter the game and refreshes based on the move. If any of the players fail to do the activity before the timer ends, then they will be considered as the loser of the game. I feel that there should be a little bit tweaking in that part but the timer is a great thing to have in the game so that the players don't take so much of time to perform any activity in the game.

To talk more about the gameplay, the game takes longer than what I expected. Sometimes even in the Chess game, there is a frustration for us if the opponent takes lots of time for every move. I experienced that in one of the game. Though there is a strict timer that takes care of that. I noticed that unlike other games, this games takes some time to complete which is good in away.

Earning Steem in the game

There is a betting option in the game where both the players will have to select the amount of steem they would like to bet. Based on the outcome of the game, the value is distributed to the winners and even looser gets some share. 20% from the betting actually go the fund with which they pay their team as well as distribute daily bonus to the players. I'm happy with this decision because the game developers and the team will definitely need a share to be taken.

We are allowed to do betting on different values starting from 1 STEEM as lowest to 1000 STEEM as highest. Based on the outcome of the game, we end up getting our betting back. It is pure luck and gambling to be honest because there is a possibility that we might lose the game and lose our bet. I would recommend investing carefully. If you would like to just enjoy the game without investing, you can choose Play For Free option.

Referral Schemes

Like all other DApps and games, there is a referral scheme available in the game. We can refer people to this game and earn something from it. There is a neat explanation as to what we get from referrals. I used @tsnaks as my referrer. I guess he will be getting the benefit. There were other options as well for me but I chose @tsnaks because it was his post that directed to the website and made me register. So thanks to him. If you wish, you can take my referral link to join the game.

https://steemknights.com/ref/@bala41288

Bugs in the game

It is quite obvious that we see lots of bugs in any newly launched application. I was able to trace out lots of bugs in the application. I played the browser version of the game and have not tried the other platforms yet. But I was able to see so many bugs in the browser application. I wish I had captured screenshot of some of the bugs so that I can add the screenshots below but I was curious to play the game so I ignored the bugs and continued with the gameplay.

I'm sure the game development team would have noticed some of these bugs and are already working on a fix for the bugs in the game.

Custom Json operations

I'm able to see lots of custom Json operation being posted to the chain from a user based on the move they are making in the game. One good thing that I noticed about these custom Json operations is that there were no delays in the game for posting these custom jsons. I'm not sure how they handle that. But definitely a good work to the team

Some Blockchain enthusiasts might think that these custom JSON operations are not good for the Chain. I'm not sure on that part because we have no restrictions as to how the blockchain should be used. If we are able to bring some good use case to the blockchain, it should be really great and especially if it attracts more investors increasing the price of the steem, then why not. People who see the Blockchain as only content creation platform might have a different opinion on this Steem has great potential than being just a content creation platform.

Conclusion

I guess I will be playing this game whenever I find some extra time to spend. I believe many people will start investing in the game and start playing the game. People who like strategy games can give it a try. Some of the game aspects can be confusing right now but when we get used to it by playing more games, I guess it should be fine.

But overall though the application is buggy (not too alarming), it gives an awesome experience to the players and the concept is also something that is new. The game involves betting, luck, and strategy which is what makes the game interesting for the players. In my opinion, the basic gameplay is good and I guess it will sustain for a long time if the management team is very good and if there are proper innovations happening in the game now and then.