Cardano NFT Column: Rogue Galaxies – The Cryptonomist

This week’s guest on the Cardano NFT Column is a project building a Sci-Fi Roguelike MMO game with the story being driven by the community: Rogue Galaxies.

The previous guest was a project banking on web3 creators to lead the digital renaissance and inspire the art of tomorrow.

This initiative is a point of reference for NFTs on Cardano and every week or two we will invite someone to answer some questions and give us an update directly from within the Cardano community.

Considering that many of our readers are new to the crypto space, we will have a mix of simple and technical questions.

Cardano NFT project: Rogue Galaxies

Hey, glad to have you here. Please introduce your team, where are you from, what are your backgrounds?

Yves – Game Director, founder of SmokeStab & Co-CEO NMKR Games. With almost two decades of combined experience in the video game development scene alongside Robin, Yves Masullo is a powerhouse in the indie game scene. Building SmokeStab from the ground up with his brother-in-arms, Yves has seen his experience bear fruit both in the web2 and web3 world. His first major release in web3 was “ADA Ninjaz: Shards of Ninava”, a Cardano based web3 game. But that’s his past. His future? To create engaging experiences that capture the player’s imagination & connect people around the world

Robin – Programming Lead, founder of SmokeStab & Co-CEO NMKR Games. Alongside Yves, Robin is ready to take the web3 gaming world by storm. Fronting the game design and leading the programming of Rogue Galaxies, Robin is bringing his experience in creating living universes where players can live their own stories into the new world of blockchain tech. Co-founder of SmokeStab, Robin has led the charge alongside Yves in the development of successful web2 games and is ready to evolve the web3 space for all future games to come.

Ignacio – Narrative Design & Storytelling, background in film, music, theatre, CCO Danketsu (formerly ADA Ninjaz). Also known as “the storyteller”, Ignacio’s experience comes from his multimedia background. Film, music, theater, manga and video games have been his professional playing grounds since his teenage years. His breakthrough into the Web3/NFT scene was as Chief Creative Officer and storyteller for ADA Ninjaz. His goals span from finding new forms of decentralised storytelling in web3 entertainment and the crypto world to creation and teaching of all forms and structures of narrative and non-narrative storytelling through various art forms.

What is Rogue Galaxies and why have you chosen the Cardano blockchain for your project?

Rogue Galaxies is a Sci-Fi Roguelike MMO, where you’ll travel through the vastness of space, unravelling the mysteries of the physical anomalies called “Overlaps” and fighting to find the source of unlimited power that lies behind these enigmas – The Stygian Light.

The year is 7582 Æ (After Earth). Humanity has evacuated our long lost Earth and spread throughout the galaxy, evolving in different ways, according to the environments they’ve found themselves in. The major governments control the different sectors of the Milky Way; the Perseum, the Sukhashan and the Merum Lineage.

The game’s story will be driven by the community, and the modular release we’re planning also allows us to take every consideration of the community and evolve the game accordingly. We’re releasing a web gamification starting end of January 2023, then the modules will come out as follows:

Module 1: Space – Q3 2023

You’ll be able to travel through space on story-driven missions, quests, and roguelike action.

Module 2: Planets

You’ll be able to land on planets and do your roguelike runs in concentric circles of difficulty with a timed “collapse” or “overlap”. Final boss, and either success, or horrible failure are the outcome.

Module 3: Social

This module will allow for more social interactions in the MMO part of the game plans.

And more to come.

We chose Cardano because that’s the ecosystem we’ve been working in since the beginning and this is an NMKR project. It’s the greenest, safest, most development friendly and low tx blockchain out there, with the best community around.

Why is there so much scepticism towards NFTs within the gaming community and how are you approaching this problem? What are some innovative use cases of NFTs in gaming?

Unfortunately the NFT space is filled with flippers, scammers, Ponzi schemes, rug-pulls and other negative aspects that fuel the scepticism towards NFTs. FTX is just another massive example. And bad actors in one chain affect all chains; the ave