sakurai thoughts

risk vs reward

• in general want to tie good payoff with good risks
• players should feel like they are in tight situations
• for monchain, make players stay in, remove safe options
• e.g. if you have to stay in an extra round to trigger some high variance effect, that could be good
• otherwise make players have to take damage in order to make things happen
• the closer you are to losing, the more options for countering should open up (?) or maybe not, depends on how much skill expression you want. (less catchup necessarily implies more skill)
• another way is to reward players for longer-term planning (e.g. over multiple turns)

clarity vs style

• visual clarity vs immersion
• for monchain, obviously pokemon / rpg influence
• what are in-universe justifications for the controls / menus?
  • lean a bit more into digital angle (digimon / chaotix esque)?
  • giving commands, deciding a strategy, making a decision
  • e.g. if you were "in the mind" of the mon, then you'd represent it as a series of options
  • simplifying the menu could also work, but e.g. the persona 5 feel of a stylized menu really adds to the flair
    • but the persona menu isn't representing something in-universe, it's just something external / flashy, like how speed lines don't exist in-universe.
    • so e.g. the right direction is something like cool pixelly boxes if we go all-in on the pixel art aesthetic

squeeze and release

• giving players tension, and then ways to reduce that tension can form a good abstract game loop
• for monchain, need to think about what outside (or inside!) pvp can form that, it's not compelling enough as-is probably
• simple method: gate mons, and do unlocking / teambuilding
• this is what sources and sinks can also be complementary to, sinks are from sources that come from relieving tension. it's a different lens.

come follow the twitter

0xmonchain is live.

will post some general thoughts etc there for now.

Also some hype artwork.

read below for some gameplay updates. mostly finishing up the mobile client to make things feel nicer (long list of bugs to fix, but overall is good).

and then new contracts / gameplay flows.

post-denver

okay so post denver basically need to focus on the mobile aspect

several ppl "got it" and enjoyed trying it out.

need faster chain, snappier client, more varied gameplay, better cues on what to do.

but mobile client was a brilliant idea.

getting the game up and running was easy enough for almost everyone.

as we develop the new metagame, need a good enough client for everyone to use

will rethink the lobby later

rn adding enough "juice"/flash to the mobile client to make it feel good for on-the-go testing

expect new client soon

and then new contracts

wiki

Okay so finalizing the stats for the next iteration. wiki is the link for those interested.

Basically lets you edit/play around with stats, most importantly calculating the amount of damage you need to KO a mon. Will add more data to it as well later.

Next mons (in in particular order) will probably be:

• llamamon
• beramon
• megamon

Okay art for all of these are ongoing now.

next steps

i feel like it'll be hard to do each mon at a time, so probably best to try and figure out:

• stat spreads
• one characteristic for each mon
• test and add it in, keep the placeholders for the rest
• slowly add in more tests for each additional mechanic
• avoids having one super fleshed out mon and the rest of the placeholder mons

brief writeup of the initial mons

Okay, let's talk specifics of some of the various mons and how I see them playing out. Reminder that monchain is supposed to play a lot like Pokemon, rewarding taking risks at the right time, as well as predictions.

(This will keep getting updated)

(you should go to the wiki to get the newest data! )

BELOW IS OLD STUFF

Sofabbi

This one was pretty easy to find a theme. It's the RNG mon, based off the gacha wheel found in Sofamon. Play style is a safe-ish pivot that can soak up damage and pull off occasional clip-worthy knockouts.

Stat spread: overall middling in everything. Balanced attack/defense, slightly higher HP than usual, slightly lower speed than usual.

Ability: Spin The Wheel

Every move has a 33% chance of refunding 1 stamina.

Moves

• RNG damage move, 3 stamina, some spread of RNG damage, maybe 10/20/40/80/160/320, could also have a few other amusing effects (eg literally RNG, could be a status move, instant kill, or even damaging yourself, this feels the most fun)
• Normal damage, 2 stamina.
• Normal damage, 2 stamina, maybe some % to inflict status.
• Heal (need to cap this somehow) by consuming all available stamina, heal by % equal to the amount of stamina needed.

Rough philosophy is to have Sofabbi run at a slightly more efficient stamina economy, and the final heal move lets it benefit from that more than another mon. Main balancing question is probably needing to make its average moveset energy costs higher to offset.

Inutia

Inutia borrows from Initia (hi Jennie). So we wanna lean into making it relatively nimble, but probably not very strong to balance it.

Stat spread: higher than average speed, lower than average on other areas. (Sort of glass cannon, except more like utility mon. Good suicide lead.)

Ability: need name

Something to benefit from swapping in and out, e.g. inflict a minor status debuff on the opponent when swapped in. Maybe something both for swap in and swap out, to encourage the in/out playstyle. Has to be a relatively minor buff/debuff then. (Eg half the benefit of a normal swap)

Moves

• Damage + swap, 1 stamina (?), allows you to hit, then swap out to another mon (maybe some slight buff?), very low damage, moreso for the swap.
• Stage hazard + team buff (but limited uses), 4 stamina, deals damage to opponent on swap in, heals your team on swap in.
• Damage placeholder
• Damage placeholder

Is hazards + swap too strong of a combo? Maybe if it's predictable there should be some counterplay, will need to monitor in prod.

Ghouliath

Man oh man. The ghouls. Ghouliath is also designed to be a weird tricky attacker. Mostly there to weather/tank hits that you can't deal with otherwise.

Stat spread: average stats, maybe slightly higher than average attack.

Ability: Rise From The Grave

An example of one of the cool things we can do w/ programmable mons. Once per game, if Ghouliath dies, it revives after 3 turns, with 1 HP. (Not sure if 1 HP debuff is needed to balance it out, as it effectively behaves like Disguise on Mimikyu and other free-turn moves, could also balance it out with lower stats, but we'll see)

Moves

• spook on opponent + damage, 2 stamina, -1 priority (probably)
• damage, 0 stamina (1 stamina?), inflicts spook on self (interesting way to bypass energy economy, but self-spook probably needs a way to handle it more elegantly, but it's flavorful)
• some sort of perish song variant, eg both mons die in 3 turns unless they swap out (probably need to balance this as well somehow)
  • or, especially because Ghouliath can already die easily, make it more like Ghouliath KO's themself, and then adds some persistent curse to the opposing mon
• damage placeholder

Pengym

It's a cute penguin. This and Gorillax are supposed to be easier to think about.

Stat spread: speedier/attack up, lower defenses.

Ability: idk yet

maybe something that rewards staying in / attacking which newer players will gravitate towards.

Moves

• Damage + % to inflict frostbite,
• Big damage, but only if opponent is frostbitten
• Stat boost
• Damage placeholder

idk, need some boring/normal mons, need to think a bit more flavorfully, maybe something that incorporates the little pengus as well.

Gorillax

bored ape. need to lean into the zero brain mindset, risking it all for bonuses

Stat spread: higher attack/hp, lower on other stats.

Ability: Angery

Every time Gorillax gets hit, gain a charge. Consume all charges at end of turn to heal (maybe a move should do this vs doing it automatically? idk can tune it more later).

Moves

• Lose Yourself: drops HP to 1, maxes out attack stat
• Damage + % status maybe
• Damage placeholder
• Damage placeholder

Basically can encourage moves to damage self to build up healing meter

Malalien

milady.

Stat spread: high speed/attack, low defenses.

Focus on weird status conditions, being "hacked", general lawlessness. Taunting or ways of restricting opponents works well. Probably a custom status condition.

Ability: Cursed

When KO'ed, inflict some nasty status on the attacker. Maybe sleep. That would suck.

(We kinda just gave this to Ghouliath, so we can either keep, or we can find something different. A powerful effect on swap-in would synergize well with Inutia and encourage the hit-and-run playstyle)

Moves

• Get Rekt, 2 stamina, reflects some existing status condition onto the opponent, maybe does some extra damage if so.
• Bully, 3 stamina, deals damage based on remaining stamina, punishes those who stay in, maybe also drains 1 stamina (is this too strong?)
• Damage placeholder
• Damage placeholder

Iblivion

Based off the weird Baseline happy face ghosts. IBLV personified.

End-game mon, designed to grow over time. Try to capture the feeling of being able to grow while leveraging existing growth to fill out the other attributes.

Stat spread: lower than average on everything (but will get stronger)

Ability: IBLV

tbd, something to do with regen maybe (eg healing up to X% of damage dealt, as long as Iblivion survives)

Moves

• Up Only, 0 stamina, both damage and stamina go up with each usage (capped at 5 stacks)
• Loop, 1 stamina, recovers stamina to full (is this OP?)
• Damage placeholder
• Damage placeholder

b(attle) log: start

Okay so this is supposed to be a dev diary of sorts for monchain. Will do a longer write-up in the future for interested parties. Mostly am thinking about fleshing out the battle mechanics so people can try it out more at Denver. Also thinking about the prediction market / betting mechanisms. Noticed some small width issues when testing / copy-paste today so have to go fix those. Also paying attention to layouts / art inspiration from earlier 1980's style anime, as well as more recent gacha games. Will add some images and moodboard stuff later.

Mostly finishing the major archetypes for the mons. Also thinking a bit about the Saga series, should probably learn more about that. The main themes overall are letting players plan a few turns ahead, as well as risk/reward trade-offs.

Anyway if you haven't noticed, the blog name is a pun on the battle log.

Also thinking about some sort of monchain idiosyncratic explorer so users can better understand what the point of the on-chain nature is, and why it's interesting. That could be a cool thing in and of itself, so gotta avoid getting distracted.

End goal is still a cool enough game that can rope in communities. Everything else is in service of that for now.