Dear Recruits,
It’s been a while — we’ve been heads down doing nothing else but building. The past few months have flown by (yet again) and we’re long overdue for an update.
We have a lot to share.
Since our last post, we’ve launched the Alpha version of Domination, open-sourced a new Web3 component, and attended a Solana Hacker House.
DOMINATION Alpha Launch
Domination is a collaborative strategy game that takes place on a map, divided into zones. The main objective is to conquer and occupy every zone on the map with your team (or faction) or eliminate all enemy players. Visit domination.gg to find out more.
On August 24th we launched the first alpha game and we’ve gone live with a new game of Domination every week. Over the past few months, we’ve organically added other core features with live feedback from our players.
Here’s a quick rundown of the core features.
War Console
The War Console is where all the Domination magic happens. Players can pinch, pan, and zoom, just like in Google Maps.
Command Bar
Players submit moves with the Command Bar. They can enable or disable Modifiers (which affect things like HP and attack power) and submit moves to zones.
When clicking the Move button, the War Console changes to an overlay with highlighted zones the player can move into. Players simply click on a highlighted zone to submit a move.
Hoorahs
When a Kai loses all of its HP, the Kai is disabled. But the game isn’t necessarily over — players can still support their teammates by deploying Hoorahs (basically propaganda beacons that affect both Friendly and Enemy Kai in a Zone). The Command Bar changes to a Hoorah input bar once a Kai is disabled.
Cycle Log
The Cycle Log shows every move the player submitted in the current cycle, as well as what happened to the player’s Kai in the previous cycle. We explored several iterations and added more detail as some events became more obvious to display.
Battle Report
The Battle Report shows a snapshot of what happened to the player’s Kai and all Factions in the previous cycles. Stats such as damage taken, damage inflicted, and number of kills are shown. Our players often reference this feature to understand how their teams did and sometimes screenshot it to flex on social media.
So far, we’ve had:
- 2 Pre-Alpha games with limited enrollment (39 players in each)
- 3 Alpha games with 39, 36, and 30 players respectively
Kai Search Page
Do you want to learn more about a specific Kai (like its rarity rank) or browse what’s available? We wanted an easy way for players to look up the info, so we created the Kai Search page. You can search for Kai based on build number and randomly browse other Kai.
The page lists attributes, build number, and rarity rank of individual Kai. We also display the Campaign History and the Discord username of the latest pilot to use the Kai. So if you’ve won a lot of campaigns with your favorite Kai, this page will do the flexing for you.
The Kai Search page is especially helpful for researching a Kai’s stats before buying it.
Remember: To buy a Kai, you can search “Kaizen Corps” on Magic Eden.
Zone Attributes
To add to the fun, some zones now have unique attributes, which incentivizes players to capture and occupy them. Zone attributes affect gameplay by affecting battle dynamics like modifiers and stats.
Community-Driven Features
Our community is super-involved and passionate about Domination. Some key community members gave us feedback on new features that would enhance gameplay.
We actively listened to what they had to say and implemented some additional features to meet their needs.
Zone Leader Orders
During games some players found their teammates were not consistent with submitting moves. We call this being “idle” — meaning a player’s Kai becomes a sitting duck and cannot fire back during that cycle. Organically, a suggestion came up to have leaders for zones who can submit a default move for all idle Kai in their respective zones.
This birthed the Zone Leader Orders feature. A Zone Leader is selected by an algorithm that targets all the players in a zone. By default, the highest-ranking faction officer is selected first, followed by the most active player. Whoever is selected inputs an order and all idle Kai will follow.
If a player has been selected as Zone Leader, the Zone Leader button (as shown below with the crown icon) appears next to the move button. Clicking this button shows a similar view as the move mode, but clicking a zone will submit a Zone Leader order.
In the Zone Panel, teammates can see the Zone Leader Order for the particular cycle above the list of Kai and their respective moves.
Mobile War Console
Initially, Domination was built solely as an in-browser game for desktop. Many of us are busy-bees, however, and are constantly on the go. The last thing we want is to miss a cycle because we couldn’t get home to our desktop on time.
The need for a mobile-responsive version of the War Console became obvious as community members requested it, so we designed / developed a mobile version of Domination and released it promptly. Every feature in the desktop version is available on mobile, but simply compressed and optimized for mobile view.
Friendly Kai Drawer
Some of our players were thinking of all sorts of creative ways to strategize moves during cycles. Spreadsheets and surveys were being thrown around in our Discord channels to find out which teammates had which modifiers.
To simplify strategy, we implemented a drawer in the War Console to show a snapshot of every friendly Kai in the same game. The drawer shows which modifiers each friendly Kai has and is currently activated, along with which zones each Kai is located in.
Although it’s fun to see creative strategy, we’ve seen a huge reduction in spreadsheets thrown around in Discord.
It’s safe to say the Alpha Launch of Domination has been a success. We’ve seen 30 / 39 players return to play every game since the initial launch. Now we are seeing new players join our Discord and games.
Curious to find out more? Come join the fun at domination.gg!
Keychain: Multiple Wallets, One Account
As we developed the mobile version of Domination, we discovered a problem: many community members store Kai either on desktop or hardware wallets for security reasons. They weren’t comfortable storing valuable Kai on mobile phones that can get lost or stolen. So how could they safely play Domination on mobile?
We came up with a solution to this problem: linking multiple wallets to a single account to pilot Kai stored in one wallet, from another. We developed a smart contract to link Solana wallets to a single player account — it’s called Keychain.
For Domination, this means you can pilot any Kai on any wallet linked on your keychain. So you can keep Kai on your hardware wallet and link your mobile wallet to play from your phone.
This way, an account is no longer tied to a single wallet
We open-sourced Keychain for other Web3 projects to use. You can find the Github repo here. If you have a project of your own, we hope you can leverage Keychain for your own needs.
Some other potential use cases for Keychain are:
- Player Profile — attaching external profile info — e.g. Twitter or Facebook
- Reputation — game or metaverse-specific stats
- Custodial (and Transferable) Wallet — you can create a wallet for new crypto users which can later be replaced with their own non-custodial wallet
Solana Hacker House — Bogota
A few weeks ago, our team attended the Solana Hacker House in Bogotá. Hacker Houses are meetups where Solana geeks get together to chat, build cool things, and ultimately have fun.
It was an action-packed week filled with networking, getting updates on the larger Solana ecosystem, and sharing Kaizen Corps & Domination with fellow builders & the Solana community.
During the week, we integrated Keychain into Domination and demoed both Domination and Keychain to attendees.
We will definitely attend more Solana Hacker Houses in the future. If you’re attending the same one as us, give us a shout! We’d be more than happy to hang out.
What’s Next:
- Collaborating with other NFT projects
- New Domination Features
- More Web3 Ecosystem Components
We’re excited to continue building and hope you continue to join us on the journey.
Enlist in the next game to join in on the fun!
If you don’t own a Kai yet, buy one on Magic Eden
About Stache
We’re a Web3 development company building Solana’s first smart wallet: Stache.
