I explored Alchemon - An Algorand NFT game, now live in Beta.

Algorand is known for many things but an actual NFT game in Beta fully operational with your wallet is new. They just released their game and I dove in for about two weeks to tell you what I could find. My intentions are to not shill this game, nor discount the potential comparatively to other’s in the space. I’m a gamer from Runescape 15 years, AOE2/AOE4 4 years, Call of duty 10 years, Yu-gi-Oh! Collector for 10 years, Mortal Kombat Kenshi main, and lifelong Pokémon fan. I want it known this is coming from a gamer haha. The fact it’ll be an Algorand Standard Asset (ASA) means that it’ll already be cheaper to operate than most known games on chains.

What is Alchemon? -It’s an NFT Pay-to-Earn game. You start out with one and go from there. You earn Alchecoin in the current game to spend on potions during the battles or I’ve seen some people sell in secondary markets to secure more alchemon.

-The battles are turn based. You can have a max of 3 Alchemon currently. There are status afflictions, and weaknesses. It has similar vibes to old school Final Fantasy battles.

-You currently play against AI to win Alchecoin, Alchemon’s native governance token, every battle you win.

-You can evolve your Alchemon to hopefully reach the legendary. This will be done with sending it off to the training grounds, in a week (if there are evolutions available) you’ll get your evolved Alchemon.

-Once they’re minted, there aren’t any more coming out. Once all the higher rarities have been achieved, that will be it. A new set will be released and you can chase a new legendary. The more sets go by, the more of each Alchemon will be minted in each set (more on this later).

Now that you know kinda what it’s about, I asked the creator a few things about it. He was super responsive and put thought into my questions. I really respect the grassroots feel here. I’ll summarize some of the features coming up for the game and some of my curiosities about the project as the first playable version only went live a week ago.

-They plan on adding critical hits. This will give a more intense gameplay for sure. That little bit of RNG keeps the soul in the battle.

-The timer is first up to get in before PvP is out. Who wants to worry about toxic gameplay where they run out the clock? Good news, they’re thinking of the future problems including adding an entry fee of alch to make sure DC’ing is heavily discouraged and not worth it.

-The PvP will lead me into my next one, staking. Can we make it a little more interesting? I’m a competitive gamer by nature and I was told there will be another token when this feature will be explored, Alchegold. Not to be confused with Alchecoin, the coin earned now through playing that maintains its status as their governance token.

-Speaking of governance, this project will be mostly community led. Players will vote with their alchecoin on new features to continue to decentralize the process. Power to the players is the ideal here, and players want to know their game doesn’t rest on one person’s shoulders. I was told that alchecoin holders will have the option to make the tough decisions. If the game isn’t being developed to the community’s goals and vision along with his, we will move to make changes.

-Now for the fun stuff. Your Alchemon have moves that are attribute based. Psychic, fire, water, ground, you get the point. A new feature being explored already is new moves in the form of NFTs! You’ll be able to use it or lose it whenever you want and it’ll help incorporate some of those features like critical hits. They already have status afflictions like “burrowed” that raises your Alchemon’s defense or “disturbed” that can make your alchemon hit your own team! This will be fun to see this side of the game develop.

-I wondered if we’d have held items for the Alchemon and it’s intended but not mapped out. We all have flashbacks to “Leftovers” and I wanna have moments where big brain players can play some big games. It’ll add that little bit of meta diversity it’ll need as time goes.

-Legendary cards, there are only 5 in existence of the first set?? Yeah, but 2000 of the most recent, set 4. They plan to increase the numbers of released legendaries as time goes by, making them continuously affordable.

-Mobile? Yeah in the future, but this needs to be done right. It’s currently on the roadmap but it’ll be done in due time. This will make the game far more accessible. It is definitely something on their mind and they’re working actively towards it.

The discord is alive and they’re approaching 3,000 members. I’ve never bought an NFT before besides Lofty real estate, and I’m really happy I did. I feel like they have a cool idea here, an accessible and helpful team, and a really good vision for something a lot of people want including myself. It’s a game I could see on twitch after it’s polished.

My complaint is that the information to really get the most out of incentives is scattered throughout. They have a site that I’ll link but some of the info I just had to get from members in the discord. From what I can find they’re a very new project in the Algo world, so the information about the whole thing being scattered isn’t a new complaint in similar spaces. I’ve been told by very active members they’ll be really trying to condense information wherever it makes sense to really help new people. My only other complaint is a little obvious, they just released the beta and it has bugs. Not anything catastrophic, but freezes sometimes and a couple graphical glitches. Every game has these, especially new ones, and it’ll be obvious things dealt with.

All in all, I’d say it’s worth a look. You might see it and think, “wow the potential” or maybe not. By the time the potential is realized there won’t be as much incentive like there is now, and I’m okay with that. I tried my hardest not to shill this product and to phrase their intentions the best I could. I’ll leave the links below if you want to read more on what it’s all about. I can’t link discord because of r/cc rules, but you can find it easily enough for sure.

Website: https://alchemon.net

Rand Gallery (Place to shop for these ASAs under Alchemon Collection) - https://www.randgallery.com/algo-collection/?address=310014962%2C320570576

AlgoXNFT (Place to shop for these ASAs under Alchemon Collection)- https://algoxnft.com/collection/alchemon