The developer of Moonray Rodrigo Etcheto has told us about their upcoming game Moonray, talked about the game's surreal art style, and explained how they plan to collide gaming and blockchain capabilities.
Introduction
I studied Mathematics and Computer Science at Duke University a long time ago. We’re a new studio but we’re doing some things that are really unique and new.
First, we’re a blockchain gaming company. Blockchain is going to totally change the game industry and it goes far beyond NFTs. Personally, I don’t think the legacy studios really understand it. We’re working on building a token economy that supports gameplay, which is absolutely crucial. Blockchain will enable new types of game interaction and it’s critically important that the blockchain enhances gameplay, otherwise there’s no point. We’ll be publishing details on that in our Discord and website soon.
Colliding Blockchain and Games
We started more than 2 years ago, originally as a normal premium game. In other words, the legacy business model for gaming. Over the past 6 months, we realized that was a mistake and pivoted to blockchain and have been working hard on that ever since.
Fundamentally, blockchain enables players to own their digital assets and take part in a true economy. With blockchain technology, you can create not just NFTs but an economy that enables you to own your assets, own your tokens, and trade those in a multitude of places. We’re building out our own blockchain marketplace now, but the beauty of crypto is the decentralized nature of the technology, so you’ll be able to take your assets to many other marketplaces too.
Art Direction
When it comes to Moonray's surreal art style, I think I’m just a little weird. I’m personally just bored with medieval and near-future games. There’s nothing wrong with that and I play them, but there are so many, what’s the point in making another? The power of 3D pipelines and Unreal Engine is so incredible, there’s just so much more that you can do and I wanted to do something really new.
I like to think about how things could be far in the future, so that’s what I wanted to imagine here. Basically, I want to build a world that I would love to live in. This is what I think is beautiful.
Game's Features
The combat itself is a mix of Dark Souls/Sekiro and Devil May Cry, my favorite action games (although I’m terrible at both of them). In other words, the combat is thoughtful, you can’t just mash buttons, but it’s not a true souls-like. There’s no point in that either. Rather we take inspiration from those genres and are crafting something new.
We are focused on story and PvP. Our game will be multiplayer and we will scale it into an MMO and the first metaverse on bitcoin. Our writers and concept artists are exceptional, incredibly talented, and are working on a sci-fi that is truly new.
Conclusion
I think that pretty much everyone will be a gamer in the future. We’re focused on bridging the gap between crypto gamers and mainstream gamers.
When it comes to solving challenges, our approach is very flexible. A famous general once said: "No plan survives first contact with the enemy". One of the important things about blockchain tech is that gamers who buy our tokens are basically investors in our company and we have to listen to them! I do have a certain vision, but you have to balance that out with feedback from the community. It’s a balance, but this has to be fun and cool and if it’s not, we need to fix that