The potential promises of blockchain gaming have been discussed for a while now, but in recent times the emphasis has turned towards fully on-chain games.
Assets ownership, open economies, IP interoperability are all features that will greatly enhance users’ experience, yet the truly revolutionary aspect, we believe, is permissionless composability. Permissionless composability in games refers to the idea that both assets and logic can be created, extended or modded by independent parties (players or studios) that might not have anything to do with the original architect of that game. These unstoppable “Autonomous worlds”, as they have been described, will push the innovation frontier in gaming, enabling more immersive and engaging experiences as anybody can become an active Demiurge of that world.
The mobile infrastructure
When we started Garbles, this ultimate vision was crystal clear but we also realized we had to build the infrastructure to make these kinds of games accessible by non-crypto natives, which constitute the vast majority of mobile players after all. In the last months, we spent a ton of time building the key infrastructure needed to bring this vision to life. Most of it is published in open-source to enable other like-minded game developers to easily embrace the power of composability in games. At the same time, despite our focus on the infrastructure level we didn’t want to wait too much before releasing a playable version of Garbles for our users to enjoy. Garbles will launch having some on-chain components and will progressively become a persistent, extensible, fully on-chain mobile game.
The roadmap
The initial version of the game will feature the resource collection of on-chain assets from an AR interface. Trash items are spawned into the map and are available to be collected with the Vacuum Cleaner. Each item comes with its own attributes and will have a different impact on how Garbles are generated. Since every player, even the non-crypto native, has a wallet (in-game or external, thanks to our wallet integration) we can publicly keep track of their captures through an on-chain ranking system. This is an important component that can be leveraged by other game builders as an identity system to provide additional perks to the top of the Garbles’ leaderboard.
The next phase for Garbles will be enabling Transmutation. Cryptokitties popularized the concept of blockchain-based virtual characters and their amazing variety of breeding combinations ended up causing significant congestion on the Ethereum back in 2017. The creation process of Garbles aims to be equally iconic and unique, with a mysterious mapping mechanic between eggs, trash items and the resulting combination of babies and fully-grown Garbles.
These are impressive features in the context of a web3 mobile game, but the true innovation comes with extensible assets/minigames. Both new assets and logic can be added into the game in the form of a) new trash items b) interactive objects on the map c) minigames or something we don’t even imagine quite yet. The whole point is to enable anyone to expand the game as they like. Players will be able to opt-in to these new components and retain control over their game experience.
Ultimately, the last piece of logic to be moved on-chain is spawning. Block by block, resources and challenges will appear on the map following on-chain rules and a persistent layer of coordinates will keep track of the location of items, Garbles and the newly added components indefinitely. This is our ultimate vision for Garbles. A persistent and endless quest against trash that can be enhanced and expanded beyond the control of the core team. We are exploring novel ways to ensure “proof of geolocation” and anti-cheating measures, such as Zero-knowledge proofs or leveraging Helium’s “proof of coverage”.
We are excited about the future of mobile games that are composable and accessible by everyone without any specific prerequisite knowledge. Garbles is trailblazing this path and we hope to inspire a new generation of players and developers to follow us in this arduous but exciting new chapter for gaming!
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