CryptoWars is the first project of Experimental, an interesting community I joined a few months ago. Their ICO sounded very different, as it was capped at a maximum number of persons (300, that is, pretty much like in Sparta the movie). The goal of this community was to innovate and find new interesting ways of using the blockchain. They accepted users with specific skills, from programming to copywriting and the idea was to create some sort of synergy.

Their first project is a game, developed on top of the Ethereum network and called CryptoWars. You can try it here (if you're a contributor, that is, but if you're not, there's a link there which will help you become one).

Prerequisites

Apart from being a contributor, you will have to have the Chrome MetaMask extension, as this is how the game interacts with the Ethereum blockchain.

Second, you will need to join Experimental private testnet, as in the current version no real Ether (or e11, the Experimental token) is used.

Once you have all of the above, you will need some test tokens, but then again, you will receive them once you become a contributor.

Game Dashboard

The very first screen of the game looks like this:

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As you can see, a lot of features are marked with "coming soon", which is something I would expect from an alpha version. But, surprisingly (in a good way) for an alpha version, the features that are implemented are working very well.

In the dashboard you can see at a glance how much gold and crystal you have, and how many buildings (civilian constructions), barracks (military constructions) and research (that I don't know what it does yet).

You can also see the status of your building stages.

The current version only has building implemented, nothing related to defense or offense.

Assets

The gameplay happens in the "Assets" area, from the top menu. Here you can see what buildings are available for construction, their cost (and implementation time, in blocks) and you can obviously start building them:

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The difference from a traditional strategy game is the order - and nature - of operations. For instance, once you decide to build something, you will obviously spend some tokens, but the first stage of this is "waiting for transaction". In other words, your construction must be validated by a smart contract on the Ethereum network.

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And here's how the game looks like a few hours later. Notice the increased amount of gold and crystal and also the number of concurrent buildings being implemented:

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Conclusions

So, other than building a few basic structures, not much can be done now in CryptoWars. But the smoothness of the interface and the overall feeling of solid work are very promising. In the next iterations there will be features like interacting with other players (attacking and taking their crypto, obviously), teleportation and even an in-game token which will be paired with e11.

All in all a very smooth experience. Can't wait for the next iterations.

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I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.

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