Kingdoms Beyond – Turn-Based RPG Backed by ETH

Kingdoms Beyond (KB) is an upcoming turn-based RPG that uses tokens backed by ETH or by the DAI stable-coin.

Kingdoms Beyond is still in an early stage of development, and few details of its features and gameplay are known. But this article will summarize what is known so far.

Kingdoms Beyond gameplay

Turn-based strategy

The developer of Kingdoms Beyond describes it as a “turn-based strategy game.” This puts it in the same niche as games like Battle Brothers, Wargroove, and Battletech.

In these games, players can choose from a variety of actions during their turns. And success or failure is determined by making the right decisions, not by how fast the player makes these decisions.

Fans of turn-based strategy (TBS) games often prefer them over real-time strategy (RTS) because they believe that TBS requires more thought than its real-time counterpart.

Pet battles

Some media outlets have reported that KB will contain trainable pets called “Mochis.” The team has not confirmed this. But the team has described the game as “Pokemon meets Runescape.”

This implies that there will be some kind of battle-pets available in the game. These pets will likely be encountered by players as they are adventuring.

And players will need to tame them, train them, and level them up in order to progress further in the game.

Skill training

Kingdoms Beyond will probably rely upon a complex skill system and skill-based leveling for character progression.

Most RPGs allow characters to progress based on experience levels. But Runescape, EVE Online, and a few other games use a different system.

In these games, characters gain skill levels instead of experience levels.

This allows characters to develop a few skills while neglecting others, which makes the characters feel more specialized and unique to players.

Since developers have described Kingdoms Beyond as “Pokemon meets Runescape,” we can expect a similar skill-based system in the public release of the game.

No wallet needed

The developers have stated that players will not need to own a cryptocurrency wallet in order to play Kingdoms Beyond. The game will be free to play without any upfront purchase, starting on web browser and eventually on a Mac and PC client.

After players have progressed in the game beyond a certain point, they will be offered the opportunity to buy the game’s collectibles using a linked Ethereum wallet. However, they will still be able to continue playing if they have no interest in doing this.

The KB team believes this will broaden the appeal of the game beyond the typical “cryptocurrency/blockchain” crowd.

In the team’s view, there are many gamers who would love to play a blockchain game. But because these players don’t know how to install or use an Ethereum wallet, they are scared away from these games.

The team hopes that letting people play for free will help to solve this problem.

Kingdoms Beyond technology

Kingdoms Beyond is unique in the world of blockchain games because it uses ETH-backed tokens whose backing can be swapped for units of a stable coin.

ETH-backed tokens

As with most blockchain games, all blockchain-backed assets in Kingdoms Beyond are ERC-721 tokens. However, KB assets are unique because they are “backed” by a certain amount of ETH.

Each time a new KB collectible is minted, the team places a certain amount of ETH in the smart contract for that collectible.

The player cannot obtain this ETH unless he burns the collectible. This puts a floor under its price.

If a player wants to quit the game and cannot find anyone willing to purchase his collectible, he can “melt” (burn) it and sell the ETH he receives on the open market.

Exchangeable for DAI-backing

Players can also convert these collectibles into identical ones backed by DAI, a stable-coin that is pegged 1:1 to the US Dollar through an internal mechanism.

When a player receives the collectible, he can decide to convert its backing to DAI instead of ETH.

In this case, an equivalent amount of DAI will be put into the smart contract, while the ETH that is currently there will be released either to the developer or the game itself.

The technical details as to how this will work have not yet been revealed. But this is the basic process.

The team believes that allowing players to back their collectibles with DAI will broaden the game’s appeal. 

Most blockchain games today are using ENJ-backed collectibles. This gives a player the option to melt his collectibles for ENJ if he want to “cash out” of a game. But it requires a player to trust that the price of ENJ itself will remain stable.

Since Ethereum is a more widely-used cryptocurrency than ENJ, the team believes that it is a better candidate for backing game tokens than ENJ.

And, if a player fears that the Ethereum price may fall, the team believes that a player should have the right to convert his backing to DAI.

In the team’s view, this will help to bring peace of mind to players and increase the game’s popularity over others.

Kingdoms Beyond demo

The Kingdoms Beyond team has released a demo (requires sign up) that shows what the game will look like. This is a very early-stage product. But it does show the 3D, overhead-view and cartoon-like graphics of the game.

From the demo, we can see that team knows its audience well. The style of graphics is similar to Final Fantasy Tactics and other popular games in this genre. 

Kingdoms Beyond team

Kingdoms Beyond is being developed by Xiponel Studios. It’s difficult to find information about the company, and none of the marketing content from the game’s website lists the names of its executives.

However, the website does state that the team is based in Waterloo, Canada, and that members of the team have previously worked for “Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.”

We have no way of verifying this information. But this is what the team says about itself.

In an attempt to find more information, we went on the Kingdoms Beyond official Discord and asked if there was more information about the team.

We got a response from an admin named “Jason.”

Here is the response:

“It’s definitely something we plan to do as we get closer to launch. The main reason I would say we haven’t revealed ourselves is we were too busy BUIDLing. Of course, our priority is to build trust with our users.”

Conclusion

It’s still far too early to know whether Kingdoms Beyond will be a fun game. But if you would like to keep up with its development, you can join the game’s official Discord.

And keep an eye on this page. If new information comes to light, we’ll let you know right here.