Blast Royale - Free to play, fun to earn battle royale!

Introduction

Blast Royale is a 30-player Battle Royale game where players are pitted against each other on a map until the last one standing emerges.

The game is currently under development and a beta testing phase is expected to begin shortly. Blast Royale is designed to be free to play but will feature play-to-earn elements down the line and features in-game characters and equipment as NFTs.

Gameplay

Right now since the game is not yet playable, we can get a glimpse from the trailer here. Blast Royale aims to be playable on mobile and the gameplay so far features a UI system similar to popular Battle Royale shooter titles such as PUBG Mobile.

Like most other Battle Royale games, the player will pre-select a few pieces of equipment as their loadout and will choose a part of the map they’ll be deployed into and then engage in taking out each other until the last survivor emerges.

Throughout the gameplay, players get to collect consumables such as health packs, ammo, and armor. They can also pick up items and weapons dropped from other players but will not bring these back from the match back into the metagame. 

As far as the value building loop in the game is concerned, the whitepaper has outlined this in the following infographic. Players can gain experience for their NFTs and earn crypto from the matches to level up their items, build up their characters, and progress through a competitive ladder to earn more rewards.

The game is also said to feature a competitive ladder with the following elements:

• Trophies are earned based on player performance in the game.

• Leagues that are similar to brackets for players earning different numbers of trophies to participate in. The higher the league the better the rewards are possible for the player to compete for.

• Championships that run in multiple seasons. All players by default participate in championships and each match grants a score for the player’s performance. Again top players in championships will be awarded tokens or even perks granting them additional powers in other facets of the game.

Team

Blast Royale is a title by First Light Games, a VC funded startup based in London. First Light Games were founded in 2018 and were seeded by Play Ventures and later Dune Ventures. Their vision is to define the gold standard for blockchain gaming and Blast Royale is the first announced blockchain gaming title that they’re working on.

The team brings seasoned game development veterans across different genres and their former experience includes blockbuster titles such as Tomb Raider, Fable, Street Fighter IV amongst many others.

The leadership team comes from the background of having delivered AAA games for multiple platforms including console, mobile, and PC. Top executives include the CEO Neil McFarland, CPO Anil Das Gupta, and CTO Matt Ryan. The executives and main figures of the team are highly transparent and doxxed — the lineup is available in the whitepaper here.

Partnerships

Blast Royale has a long list of partners since its announcement of a $5 million seed round led by Animoca Brands and Mechanism Capital.

Among the lead investors, other prominent players who participated in the seed round include DeFiance Capital, C2 Ventures, Merit Circle, Dragonfly Capital, and more.

In April 2022, the project also announced a partnership with Machinations which is a platform for game developers to design and simulate game economies and systems. Throughout this partnership Blast Royale will get access to the tools and knowledge of Machinations’ professionals to fine tune the Blast Royale game economy design such that it presents an enjoyable experience for the gamers and is sustainable in the long term.

Assets & Ecosystem

Blast Royale ecosystem is based on a dual token model with a governance token called Blast ($BLST) and a secondary token Craft Spice ($CS). BLST will be an ERC20 token.

BLST holders can get early access to new features and participate in governance voting. Staking will be available in the future to get a share of treasury revenues.

Craft Space ($CS) on the other hand can only be minted via playing the game or interacting with the in-game systems and its main utility is for performing many of the in-game actions such as equipment replication, repair, crafting, and more.

An IDO for BLST is coming shortly in Q2 2022 and the basic info sheet for the token is as follows:

• Total Supply: 512,000,000 $BLST

• Private Sale Price: $0.065 (DAI)

• Strategic Round Price: $0.090 (DAI)

• Public Sale Price: $0.098 (DAI)

• Listing Price: $0.100 (DAI)

The funds from the public sale are expected to be used to provide liquidity for BLST for listing on exchanges. This is also to grant the owners early access to some of the game’s upcoming metaverse features.

The team has done a very clear detailed breakdown of each of the categories of the token allocation and its respective unlock schedule in the gitbook. We suggest all interested readers to give it a look.

Notable cliffs for the emissions are those of the team and advisors (both 9 months from TGE), Private sale (6 months from TGE), and Strategic round (3 months from TGE).

As for playable assets, since the game is aimed to be free-to-play with play-to-earn elements, there is a selection of non-NFT characters which are available for everyone. As for NFT characters, these are potentially available down the line as the game roadmap matures. However, these are considered to be purely cosmetic entities and do not affect gameplay as the game developers feel that a pay-to-win design is limiting for blockchain gaming and would like the NFT characters just to be the players’ digital representations or avatars in Web3.

For in-game equipment, Blast Royale allows players to own their game assets and monetize them by turning these into NFTs. The docs hint at a possibility to convert equipment into NFTs that can be traded for other items, sold for money, or using this equipment in-game to earn crypto competitively as a P2E element.

How to get started

Right now the game is still in development and a beta is expected to be coming shortly. Beta testers are currently being recruited in the Discord and to get a chance to participate, you will contribute in the Discord or social media, be it via creating content, or just spreading the word about Blast Royale over social media platforms.

A gameplay preview is also available and we can have a sneak peek of what the game is looking like in action.

Regarding the BLST token, the project has undertaken a private sale already in Q1 2022; the public sale and IDO are expected to be in Q2 2022. Whitelisting and eventually, the sale of the NFT assets are also going to be in the same period according to the roadmap.

Early access to the game for Deathmatch game mode will be available in Q2 and the estimated beta game launch date will be in Q3-Q4 2022, subject to official updates via Twitter or Discord.

Conclusion

And that’s it for this week’s review on Blast Royale! Despite there being little information available for the gameplay, the Blast Royale whitepaper is very well made and we are particularly impressed by the fact that the team members are doxxed and the lineup is very detailed on the official website and the gitbook. We surely appreciate the attention to detail put into the gitbook, especially around tokenomics and game mechanics. The project actually also has a medium that publishes interim updates from time to time. While we didn’t go through some of the details here, we can see from some of the articles that the project team has put a lot of thought into some of the design decisions and are serious about delivering a good product and experience for the gamers!