GALACON HACKATHON FINALISTS

Gala Games
6 min readMar 25, 2021

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We LOVED the GalaCon Hackathon! There were so many awesome ideas that people wanted to share with the world. We were able to narrow it down to four finalists that we will be putting to the community for a vote.

In order to keep the basic standards unified, we have asked our professional lore writer to cut the proposals down to key elements and added in some filler text where needed so that everything is roughly the same length and basic writing style. There were quite a few great proposals, but we zeroed in on the ones we thought were most unique.

Untitled Pirate Game

Set sail for adventure in this pirate-themed survival game that will feature the kind of real asset ownership that only NFTs can provide. The massively multiplayer online game will contain elements of island survival like those found in Rust from Facepunch Studios, one of the most watched games on Twitch in 2021. Additionally, it will throw sea-faring elements of adventure and exploration into the mix that may remind you of the incredibly popular Sea of Thieves, which has over 15 million players today.

What can blockchain do for this type of adventure of survival and exploration? The possibilities are as endless as the limits of your imagination. It starts with the most obvious: Addition of tokenized assets such as coins, gold, gems and other various treasures. Many of these treasures could be spent in secondary in-game markets on non-fungible assets, which is where it really starts to get interesting. You could commission the building from scratch of a custom ship designed to sail to the furthest reaches of the world. Then when the voyage is done you could sell your ship for riches untold, then use the loot to buy a fleet of ships for your next adventure.

Other examples of NFTs could be rare weapons with stories of their own, private island pieces of real estate, even songs, treasure maps, medicines, curses or anything else that could have value in this pirates’ world. With true asset ownership and the power of non-fungible tokens, the possibilities are as limitless as the vast and mighty seas!

Aquathereum

Aquathereum is a massively multiplayer online game that is set in the futuristic underwater world of a distant planet called Exus. Exus was originally discovered some 30 light years away by the Earth’s government, who at first attempted to rule the planet as a colony. After a time, the Earth government granted independence to the planet Exus, whose technologically advanced inhabitants must now fend for themselves in the water-covered world.

Using many different models of underwater ships, players of Aquathereum must embark on quests, mine resources and organize production, while navigating the dangerous waters of enemies, battles, wars, clans and allies who are driven by their own interests. Ultimately the players who succeed at taming this underwater frontier will be able to build the most magnificent underwater bases, the strongest buildings, and the fastest and most powerful ships that can be found on the planet Exus. There are also future plans to develop the surface of Exus for land-based play, but for now there is an entire world to explore and conquer beneath the waves. The strong will survive, but only the most ingenious will thrive in Aquathereum.

The player-driven in-game economy of Aquathereum lives on the Ethereum blockchain, with ships, modules, buildings and other in-game assets existing on-chain as ERC-721 tokens. These tokens are created, owned, traded and sold by the players themsleves, who have full control and ownership over their in-game belongings. If you’re looking for a MMO game that gives new meaning to the word immersive, look no further than Aquathereum.

Learn more at: https://www.aquathereum.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB40hoVjeOQ

Tempus Rursus

Tempus Rursus (Time Anew) is a game concept birthed by synergy, social connections, and real-life historical artifacts in which players collectively piece together narratives of history to uncover its deepest truths.

Using compelling varieties of gameplay similar to those found in classic problem-solving games like Myst and Timelapse, Tempus Rursus will gamify historical research in a way that has never been done before. Thanks to blockchain technology, real historical documents and artifacts can now be tokenized and used as pieces in one of the most interesting games of all: The game of history. Lots of these items will require the attention and investigation of future generations of historians for the mysteries to be fully understood and unraveled. Many such items are letters, which are very old and fragile. By recreating these pieces of history as tokens within a game, future generations will not only take an interest in lost relics of the past, but will work together to solve their mysteries for the benefit of the whole world.

The lines between work, school, and play are becoming blurred more each day as we gradually move toward systems like that which Gala Games is building. Through the creation of the right kind of games, we can motivate and inspire students, teachers and players to learn while playing, and through the power of blockchain and NFTs, we can create incentives and value for this kind of research. The Blockchain Games Network aims to create games that will preserve important pieces of history while encouraging conservation, activism and education through play.

Possession

You are a being of pure energy and you find yourself in a strange place. You do not know where you are. In fact, you do not know who you are. This is where your grand challenge begins.

By exploring your surroundings, you gradually learn that the physical world around you is made up of basic elements that are not entirely unlike the mysterious energy that allows you to exist. You play and wander, eventually discovering that you can absorb the elements of your surroundings, allowing you to become the grass, the soil, the water, the air. You are able to experience the realities of these things as you possess them, but doing so wears you out quickly. You realize that this ability will require practice to master.

Possession will be a new kind of game that gives new meaning to the phrase “walk a mile in someone’s shoes.” As a lifeform of pure energy, the player must literally possess the physical entities around them. Anything can be possessed, from the smallest ant to the most brilliant human, to a mighty bear in the woods. In their native form, the player can learn and advance various skills, but each type of person or creature they must possess has skills of their own, many of which must be used to achieve the player’s goals.

The ultimate goal of Possession is for the player-controlled lifeform to rediscover the place of its origin and eventually return there after completing its quest as a more enlightened being. Only by learning to understand and control the elements of the physical realm through millennia of experience can this truly be possible.

Begin the true journey of existence with Possession.

What happens next?

I will personally be reaching out to each GalaCon Hackathon Finalist and scheduling them for a 15-minute Q&A session with me. This will be recorded so that they can all be compiled into a single video so that the community can watch them all before voting.

Since the prize funding, just like the prizes for the other events, come from us as a team, we will be holding a vote in the Discord announcement channel via emoji on who is the winner. In the event that a tiebreaker is needed, the tied game ideas will be submitted to the node network to vote.

Thank you all for participating!

There is a LOT more coming for the Gala Games ecosystem, so make sure to keep in touch, watch the Discord (http://galagames.chat) and get ready for more interesting news! Follow Gala Games on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or in our Discord!

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