In order to keep games fresh and relevant for far longer, the most passionate and dedicated players will find ways to modify it. Titles like Grand Theft Auto, Counter-Strike, and World of Warcraft’s Frozen Throne are good examples of how modding games can add and influence the gaming world. Now there’s a game in the blockchain that seeks to create this player-empowered progress in the Play-to-earn space called Nine Chronicles, an open-source idle RPG.
Background
Developed by Nine Corporation and published by Planetarium Labs, Nine Chronicles is an idle RPG that tries to create an environment that players can directly influence. By making the game open-source, players who are passionate can directly influence the events and characters in the game. Creating an experience that the players can truly call their own. The game is also backed by big names like Ubisoft, Animoca Brands, and Binance labs to name a few.
Gameplay and Graphics
Graphics for Nine Chronicles reminds me of the art style for Ragnarok, another RPG that has animated characters in an anime style. Although in Nine Chronicles, they are more cartoonish as the character heads are slightly larger than the rest of their body, but the animation is good enough that it doesn’t strain the eyes.
When it comes to the gameplay, there’s not much you can do other than equip the necessary pieces of equipment and items your hero needs before going on an adventure or a dungeon raid. Nine Chronicles uses an idle game system that lets your character move on autopilot and proceed to the next enemy after it eliminates its previous targets. This makes the gameplay simple but also takes most of the fun away as you don’t have the control to finetune strategies.
When you first start playing, you’ll receive a prompt to choose between the non-mining and mining-enabled games that provide extra earning power. There are PVE and PVP game modes which are Dungeons and PVP respectively as well as the crafting mode where you can sell the items you make in the game’s marketplace.
Earning Potential
Nine Chronicles Gold or $NCG is the currency used inside the game. Players will be able to earn $NCG not only from playing and topping the leaderboards for the Arena but also through its mining features. I was not able to test this out, but some reviews suggested that it only takes up 1 core from your CPU and won’t impact your device usage much.
NCG token is used for crafting, trading, and upgrading equipment. Another method to earn is through staking and trading materials in the marketplace.
Final Thoughts
Games being decentralized in the blockchain gives room for players to voice out their opinions especially if there are governance tokens involved and I think the way Nine Chronicles handles this is also a smart choice as it lets players create more content for the game if they ever run out of things to do. This can create a loop that players can enjoy amongst themselves and keep the game fresh for far longer even if hype from it goes down.
Nine Chronicles has a lot of potential but it is far from perfect. I’m not a fan of its auto-battle especially since it is an MMORPG and I think it should be filled with more than one way to play as a Role Playing Game. But here, the only role you play for me is a glorified spectator and unless you really just like seeing big numbers pop out while watching your character hit the same enemy a couple of times then you might get bored of this game quickly.
Overall, I think the idea for Nine Chronicles is great and the world-building for it can be huge as players who will passionately love the game can influence it in more ways than one but if you are looking for a game with lots of skill expression, then you might have to give this open-source RPG game a pass.