The virtual world MMO of Cradles: Origin of Species has received a $1.2 million seed investment from Animoca Brands, Huobi Ventures and various other investment groups. The development team will use the investment to build their next-gen MMORPG with its dynamic NFTs and slowly dying game world.
Wait? A dying game world? Yes, DRepublic has developed a new ERC protocol, ERC-3664. These types of NFTs allow game developers to have assets change over time, while time is measured through the blockchain. In the case of Cradles that means that game worlds will decay when players don’t take care of them. Nature will take over, chaos will unfold, buildings will collapse, that kind of stuff.
It’s very clear that the investment in Cradles: Origin of Species is one in the game, but also one in this new NFT technology. The investment of $1.2 million is probably enough to further develop and integrate the NFT into the MMO, so perhaps we will see a working alpha product next year.
We explained ERC-3664 deeper in our previous coverage of Cradles.
What is Cradles: Origin of Species
Cradles: Origin of Special is an MMORPG with a play-to-earn economy. The world of Cradles offers a main city and an adventure zone. In this adventure zone players can find all creatures that are now extinct in real-life. Players can gather resources, and create and trade items. Even more interesting is that they can take-over the body of a dinosaur and experience the world from their perspective.
Players play the role of a Newman born in the Triassic age. Players need to use DRPC tokens to buy crystals and other props. The crystals are then used to upgrade NFTs. In addition they need TimeSpaceSand to travel through time and space, enter different worlds, and visit the past or future. Players also use these tokens to govern worlds.
From a gameplay perspective, players need to stop two demigods who are destroying the world. Plaguer infects living creatures, while Disaster brings earthquakes and altered weather patterns. Civilization in the game will develop as soon as players reach a certain level of governance, such as building towns and gaining new technologies like mills and waterwheels. Through player progressions in technology and governance, the game worlds will advance through era progression, such as from the Triassic age to the Jurassic age.
During gameplay, the energy of the purchased time crystals slowly dissipates with the passage of time
in the block according to the rate of time passage in that world. When players enter a completely new world, things are super dangerous and a crystal may loose its power very fast. However, players also have the opportunity to find super powerful NFTs and items in these dangerous worlds.
Cradles allows players to acquire One World. These planets or worlds exist in rare items, which they called space caskets. Players who have this item can create a new world where time will start at zero. In this world players can acquire resources, learn to build houses, trade assets and so on. After creating their own One World, players can enable ‘projection mode’ and allow other players to discover this new brave world from within the main world. Thanks to a concept called Mod Slots, each world can have a different gameplay mechanic, ranging from story-driven mechanics, to survival or simply luck mechanics.
