Over the years, gaming has evolved significantly—it's not just entertainment, it's a revolution reshaping our culture, technology, and economy. This transformation is particularly evident when gaming intersects with blockchain technology, where not only are in-game items recorded on the blockchain, but the game's rules and states also run on it. Yet there's always a sense of nostalgia for the classic titles and game mechanisms we grew up with.
The Tamagotchi, a digital pet that originated in Japan in the mid-1990s, was designed by Bandai as a compact, egg-shaped device featuring a basic LCD screen where users could care for and nurture their virtual pets. Initially, these devices required a physical cable to connect with another player's Tamagotchi for interactive activities. For 25 years, Tamagotchi has been entertaining people around the world, with more than 82 million units sold as of 2019.
Remakes continue to this day—the latest being Tamagotchi Connection. This signals an iconic brand that remains in the minds of many people as a cherished part of their childhood.
The early days of on-chain gaming were marked by the birth of "Loot" by Dom Hofmann. This project initially sparked a surge of excitement, leading to numerous projects built upon its framework. However, the initial buzz quickly faded due to nascent infrastructure and unclear leadership. Despite this setback, Loot highlighted the powerful concept of composability enabled by blockchain technology. Over last few years, there has been some huge studios looking at this direction, Pirate Nations and CCP Games (Eve Online) to name a few.
In on-chain games, the open-source, permissionless nature of the blockchain allows developers to freely build upon existing games, innovate with modding, and devise their own monetization strategies. Yet, despite the original hype, on-chain game studios have faced enormous challenges. These range from technical issues (such as the inability to scale to many concurrent players due to blockchain's general scalability hurdles) to player experience concerns (like the need to sign a transaction for every game action—a cumbersome process for most game genres).
Despite a plethora of experiments, the lack of successful case studies in on-chain games has left many founders directionless and caused great uncertainty for prospective entrepreneurs eyeing this sector. However, there's bound to be a title or two that emerge from this chaos and change this perspective. Emerging from this nascent scene, Kamigotchi represents one of the most exciting ventures recently in the realm of on-chain games, combining typical RPG with strategy and on-chain economy.
Developed by the talented team at Asphodel, Kamigotchi draws strong inspiration from the classic Tamagotchi game with its entire game engine hosted on-chain, therefore not only having a robust on-chain economy but drawing mechanisms not possible before especially social factors. The core gameplay involves exploring various rooms on a map with Kamigotchi pets, completing quests to earn XP, leveling up Kami, and farming in-game tokens. There's also a PvP aspect of the game where you liquidate other players by "killing" their Kamigotchi.
Beside competing with each others in terms XP/reputation and PvP, the game also incoporate Co-op, which is a system of global quest that everyone can put their $MUSU into (or burn items you farmed) in other to achieve a mutual goal. Co-ops are essentially "pop up" events that has a certain cap of $MUSU so you need to be quick not to miss out, and they come with some unique set of rewards beside getting your reputation up.
Kamigotchi's in-game currency, $MUSU, is tradable within the game environment, allowing players to exchange it with others for various items. Unlike traditional games, Kamigotchi doesn't release its own guides; instead, it relies on the community to create resources, fostering a strong, collaborative player base.
From the architectural perspective, Kamigotchi is developed using a derivative of the MUD engine from Lattice and will operate on their own appchain Yominet, which is powered by Initia’s Interwoven Stack and integrates Celestia's Data Availability. The team has exploring different solutions for their appchain on top of Celestia and came to the conclusion that Initia is, by far, the best choice for their need. With the upcoming launch of Initia, Yominet is certainly one of the most highly-awaited appchain there.
In Kamigotchi world, Kamis are divided into four distinct types: Normal, Insect, Eerie, and Scrap. Each type boasts a unique set of body and arm traits that not only define its category but also establish a strategic rock-paper-scissors dynamic among them. For example, Scrap types have an advantage over Insect types, Insect types are strong against Eerie types, and Eerie types prevail over Scrap types. The Normal type, however, is designed to be balanced, with no specific strengths or weaknesses against other types.
The potential of each Kamis is influenced by four basic stats: Health, Power, Violence, and Harmony. These are initially determined by five randomized traits at level 0: Face, Hands, Body, Color, and Background. These traits set the foundational stats for a Gotchi. As players level up, they can fine-tune these stats to tailor their Kamigotchis to specific strategic objectives, whether it’s optimizing for farming, maximizing liquidation capabilities, or enhancing durability to avoid being liquidated. Here’s how each stat functions:
Health: High health allows longer durations for farming MUSU, as health decreases gradually during this activity.
Power: This determines the efficiency and rate at which MUSU can be farmed.
Violence: This stat influences how effectively a Kamigotchi can liquidate others.
Harmony: Acts as a defensive mechanism, protecting the Kamigotchi from liquidation.
Players are thus equipped to strategically develop their Kamis. They can choose to optimize their pet as a Predator, Harvester, Enlightened, or Guardian to align with their strategy and what they wanna do in the game (farming or PvP-focus). Each of those types come with a sophisticated skill trees (that will likely to be even more complicated in the future after revamping on testnet feedbacks) that you will need to spend times to get familiar with and come up with the right build for your Kami.
A special thanks to BirthdayBoy for providing valuable resources on building skill trees:
Let’s build the ultimate Predator in @kamigotchiworld ! 
Many of current challenges with on-chain gaming lies in addressing technical issues beside fulfilling user needs. For example, after Pirate Nation's lucrative season 1 airdrop attracted more players, the Proof of Play chain became overloaded, necessitating the opening of new chains. This situation highlights the difficulty in balancing technical infrastructure with effective product launches and user engagement.
Recently, Kamigotchi completed its testnet 1 phase with remarkable success. There has been overall 1.5 millions transactions with thousands of players eagerly having their first looks of the game, minting their Kamis and also getting their hand on the passports. The community's active participation provided invaluable feedback, helping to fine-tune the game's balance. This feedback ranged widely, from a security researcher who leveraged his coding prowess to dominate gameplay: https://x.com/plotchy/status/1811439277995429940?s=61, to an enthusiastic community member who crafted a guide for newcomers. There is a genuine enthusiastic community shaping up over here, and crypto is really, for the large part, all about communities.
The open nature of on-chain games inherently allows for bots and multi-accounts. The Kamigotchi community has developed various bots, including those for liquidation, farming, and others. Players also inherently can spawn up multiple accounts due to that nature, not just for farming reputation and passports on the testnet, but also as a strategy to quickly level up their "core" Kami by liquidating Kamis from "subaccounts." While the team embraces these elements as integral parts of the game, they also prioritize striking a balance to ensure that bot utilization isn't the only viable strategy. This balance is a crucial part of fine-tuning the game through testnet data and feedback as stated above. Additionally, the finite supply of Kamigotchis naturally discourages the use of too many accounts.
The team has demonstrated the crypto ethos of building on the public right from the start, with new contents as well as many mechanics and balance changes already happening during the testnet period after collecting data and feedback from the communities. The game is getting more balanced, strategic and intricate days by days. New mechanisms such as crafting, private tiles, guilds/DAO,... are also part of the pipeline as the subsequent testnets and finally mainnet being rolled out.
There are also plenty of excitement from the community members on getting the Kamigotchi passport, which will give access to the presale of $ONYX - the native token that will power Yominet.
With these insights incorporated, Kamigotchi has launched Testnet 2 on 26th October, with 800 passports reserved for this testnet. It will be a real war out there to get the hand on those passports due to more public exposure and people having experiences from the first testnet so be ready early. Getting familiar with the game especially the skills tree and strategies and following accounts such as @BithdayBoy could be handy.
We first came across 0xlethe a year ago and were immediately impressed by his story and determination. After a long time heading down on building, It's been a pleasure watching this talented team at Asphodel execute over the past year (with a mere 500k raise for runway that we were proudly a smart part of), and we're thrilled to continue supporting Kamigotchi in their journey to create a strategic on-chain game that is truly engaging and changing the landscape of this whole vertical.
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