Overview
I'm sure many of us can look back to a simpler time, sitting back on a lazy Sunday afternoon, booting up our sweet Gameboy Advance or Nintendo DS. We had one goal in mind, to be the very best Pokemon trainer, and to catch em' all! Now with keeping the nostalgia and essence of Pokemon alive, picture what life would be like inside the Pokemon universe. Training your Pokemon to extreme levels would provide real-life value if the Pokemon themselves were real assets, but alas, they're just digital code inside a mainstream game, no matter how much we would like to think they're our companions. This is where the decentralized world of Ethermon steps in. Inside the world of Ethermon, your digital monsters have real value, and that value can only increase over time with the iteration of more training and possible evolution. Imagine being able to sell or trade your top tier Pokemon for in-game loot, or better yet, even stronger Pokemon! In Ethermon, this is all possible and more. The Ethermon team goes by the name of Nakasatoshi and is led by block advisers Loi Luu and Ari Meilich. The team looks to bring the experience of capturing and training digital monsters to the blockchain, in the form of ERC tokens! Looking directly at the Ethermon website, let's see what the general idea is.
"Etheremon is the first game opening an era of Game 3.0. It creates a world of Mons (Etheremons) where you can capture, train, transform, and trade them with others. Combining Blockchain and Virtual Reality technology, Etheremon offers a gaming experience like never before. This is the first gaming world ever where you actually own the assets which no one can influence or steal from you and see them operating like in the real world."
By looking at this brief description, you begin to understand that your individual "mons" can be trained and upgraded in order to be transformed, much like the process of evolution from Pokemon. What this description doesn't shed light on is the fact that you can also battle other players in real-time, to declare whose "mon" is superior. Another big point to take away from this description is the fact that Nakasatoshi is aiming to push this game into the VR space, which should prove difficult, but could help bring Ethermon to a high level of play, and could help thrust it into mainstream gaming. While VR implementation is still on the horizon, the team hopes to have it up and running as soon as possible. (Q2/Q3 2020)
Statistics
Since the games launch in December of 2017, the team has put a roadmap on display for what they have and hope to achieve by Q4 2019.
By looking at this roadmap, you can tell Nakasatoshi is constantly looking to improve and update their game. Tournament style battles, Advanced In-game Market, and Real Time Strategy are some key points the team looks to implement by the end of the year. With the launch of Ethermon in December of 2017, lets take a look at the player base statistics for the current state of the game.
Players- 11,280 players
Active Ethermon- 51,589 Ethermon
Battles Logged- 1,155,275 battles
Explorations- 36,951 explorations
Conclusion
While the player base continues to grow, I'm excited to see where this game goes. Being able to capture and train your own digital monster (all while gaining value over time) should appeal to many people across the world. Even though I have just began to dive into the Ethermon universe (rather late), I look forward to seeing how the team continues to update and upgrade this game, and hope to do a more proper review when the time comes. If you're like me, and strive to train to become the strongest, then I'll see you on the battlefield!