Even though there is an influx of Play-to-earn games and cryptocurrency in general is gaining traction, a lot of people still have negative feelings towards crypto as it often comes with stories of people being scammed or losing a lot of money on projects in the blockchain. The technology is new, and it has plenty of untapped potential but treading on unfamiliar grounds comes with its risks as well and one particular game that experienced the heat from playing with this new technology is Untamed Isles. A project with such bright potential that it almost burned.

Background

Demand for a Pokemon styled Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) is huge as seen by the amount of people who supported the Kickstarter for Untamed Isles, a monster-taming MMO RPG from New Zealand-based indie developers, Phat Loot Studio. The team raised over $841k NZD or £420k and the game is on its way to become one of the most anticipated games inside MMORPG circles, however people who aren’t to keen on crypto noticed that the game is trying to implement a Play-to-Earn model with NFT integration which is common on blockchain games. Investors felt betrayed as information about this was not made known to them up until months before the game’s intended release. 

As some people don’t want to deal with crypto and NFTs, they wanted to be out of the game but refunds for the investors were no longer available as the developers had already hired 70  people to work on the game which they then laid off due to development costs piling up. The team has currently put the development of Untamed Isles on hiatus until further notice.

Gameplay

Untamed Isles is supposed to be a Pokemon-inspired turn-based MMORPG that lets players explore an engrossing open-world landscape while taming monsters called “Tames”.  The goal is to create a game where players can collect, battle, and interact as there are social tools available for the players like proximity voice chat available, letting you and your friends uncover the mysteries of the Untamed Isles together. 

Untamed Isles also boasts about the variety of monsters inside the game as each tame is made up of 7 body parts with 15 subtypes called “moods” that can be mixed and matched to create new Tames that you’ve never encountered while traveling. Each will have different strengths and weaknesses depending on the environment and conditions you find them in which can help in battles. 

Players can further refine Tames with the help of breeding to create new Tames based on genetic attributes from them as well as the moods and body parts the parents possess. They can then be traded, sold or trained by players to have stronger tames for their own team.

Final Thoughts

I was disappointed while researching Untamed Isles as the gameplay trailer made me want to try out the game immediately. It features a greatly designed atmosphere and the characters were not shabby as well with the added option to customize them. It was hard to believe that it came from an independent studio as it looked similar to Pokemon Legends: Arceus with a hint of Genshin Impact because of the high saturation, bright and vivid nature they like to bring inside the game. It’s painful to know of the backlash the devs have to deal with for creating a game because web-2 gamers are not ready to embrace web-3 integration quite yet.**
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Although the devs trusted that the core mechanics of the game can still continue even without the crypto integration, I think they are also at fault for trying to include a lot of mechanics for their 1st game: an open world with changing weather systems, PVP, dungeons, and NFTs. The ideas are all welcome but it became a case of Icarus flying too close to the sun and because of that the Untamed Isles will remain untamed for who knows how long.