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Welcome to my developer blog for cyberchain.ai, a new kind of cross-genre game that brings elements from MMOs into a base-building, node-defense style game with an action/strategy card mechanic connecting everything. This is a 3D world to explore with dozens of AI NPCs and real people existing. Sometimes, you may not know the difference! Deep, rich and branching narratives are an integral part of this game. Interact with AI Agents who will send you on various missions. Level up, obtain procedurally generated RNG-style Loot (think borderlands) to upgrade your agents and cards.
Find and craft items and vehicles to use in card battles. Hack data nodes to uncover the truth and lots more…
DISCLAIMER: Some art in this game was purchased royalty-free, for non-commercial use. Other art are the property of their respective owners and are substantially modified for fair use on this site only. This is not the final art for the game.
What is CyberChain?
Let’s talk in more detail about the vision for this game. Take the aesthetic of Tron, combine the MMO and base building of EVE:Online, use the RNG loot system of Borderlands (corporation made items, various stats and effects, colored levels), the strategic card gameplay of Gwent or Hearthstone, and the RPG, Story-driven narratives of games like Detroit: Become Human, Witcher 3 or Fallout: New Vegas. Combine all that into an exciting 3D+2D (UI) world, where you hack, encrypt, discover, loot, defend and outwit both human and AI opponents in a global persistent cyber world.
Let’s break all that down, shall we?
Persistent Cyberverse
CyberChain will be a persistent, worldwide cyberverse. This means that when you build and connects nodes, they are part of the same sandbox universe everyone sees. How this gets done and what it means to gameplay will be discussed in future dev diary. But one important ingredient of this, is transparency. CyberChain will use blockchain technology to grow a player-owned distributed cyberverse spanning the earth.
Base Building
In CyberChain, you can hack, acquire and build what are called “nodes”. Nodes are defense structures that you connect together to protect your assets and your location in the cyberverse from invaders. Nodes come in many shapes and sizes. When nodes are linked together, these form your base. Attackers have to penetrate nodes and follow the links to get to your home node (your base), so building out a complex array of connected nodes (yours or others!) surrounding your territory and home bases is important design.
Node Defense
Your nodes can be upgraded, levelled and have useful augments and programs installed on them to help them defend against hacking agents. More on this in future developer diary. Generally, simple, low-level nodes will have a simple polygon design such as a pyramid. The more powerful a node becomes, with many programs (skills) and augments, the complexity of the nodes shape changes – acquiring more facets or polygons.
Card Mechanics
During the gameplay, you will encounter AI Agents. These agents will often want something from you in exchange for services, items, programs, etc. If you grow your reputation enough with an agent, that agent will join your card deck and you can use their abilities in various ways, such as attacking nodes, defending against intruders, scanning nearby entities etc.
Each agent card has a class, a level, and resources such as bandwidth, storage and memory. This determines what kinds of programs can be installed and run on the card. As you perform missions for these agents, you can improve the card, grow its resources and install looted chips, programs and other devices to give abilities to that card. Those are then used during card play which is discussed more on the Game page.
RPG Based
Unlike other card games, CyberChain is at its core an RPG. This means you ineract with NPCs, you have dialog, make choices, play kind the kind of user you want, resulting in different outcomes depending on the paths you take. Your agent cards are like “your party” in classic RPG terms. You talk to them, perform missions for them, level them up, use them in tactical and strategic game play, etc. Although they are Artificial Intelligence’s, your AI Agents are real! Take care of them.
