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Project Highlights

• Gods Unchained is a turn-based, free-to-play, fantasy card game built on the gas-free L2 Immutable X. The game focuses on competitive play; players must outsmart their opponents by building decks that can counter a wide variety of tactics.
• The $GODS token is the core currency of Gods Unchained, fueling the ecosystem that empowers players to earn and sell NFTs. It has been listed on many top exchanges including Coinbase, FTX, Coinlist Pro or Huobi Global.
• Gods Unchained has established a passionate community of evangelists with 96.8K Twitter followers and 85.4K Discord members.
• Gods Unchained is developed by Immutable, an industry leading VC-funded blockchain company backed by a number of big investors. The team consists of 50+ talents from top tier companies including Riot Games, Electronic Arts, Goldman Sachs, Wizards of the Coast, etc. The team is led by Chris Clay, former game director of Magic: The Gathering Arena, an incredibly popular game that once boasted over 100M players (2018).
• In September 2019, Immutable raised $15M in Series A. The round was led by investment firms Naspers Ventures and Galaxy Digital EOS VC Fund, with participation from Apex Capital Partners. The funds will be utilized to further develop Gods Unchained and build an open-source blockchain platform for developers.
• Since its beta launch in 2018, Gods Unchained has grown significantly, both in size and quality. There's an estimated 13M Gods Unchained NFTs and around 65K unique asset holders. The game has had over $52M worth of assets traded among users and has over 450K registered players with 80K weekly active players despite only being in beta (as of January 2022).
• In November 2021, in a Herculean event, the $GODS token sale on CoinList has added over 20,000 $GODS token holders to the Gods Unchained ecosystem. The $GODS token sale marked a new CoinList record with over 879K unique registrants.
• Gods Unchained has an appealing fantasy aesthetic taking inspiration from both Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering Arena, pairing the obvious user interface and structural influence of the former with a card art style of the latter. The game has received tons of positive feedback from the community. Navigating the menu system is straightforward, and interacting with the game board is intuitive as well.
• Gods Unchained is currently available on Windows and MacOS and the team is working on bringing the game to mobile devices and tablets in the near future. This will not only help introduce Gods Unchained to many more players, but also provide a convenient way for them to enjoy battles wherever they please.

Gods Unchained concept art

Overview

• Gods Unchained is one of the most prominent blockchain-based games to date, delivering an online collectible card game experience on Immutable X. The free-to-play game itself is much like Blizzard’s immensely popular Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, with fantasy-themed character and unit cards that players will play turn by turn in an effort to defeat their enemy. Thus, this will be an easy transition for those already familiar with Hearthstone, but with a crypto edge.
• However, in most games, including rivals like Hearthstone, Magic: The Gathering Arena or The Elder Scrolls: Legends, the cards are simply part of the game experience owned and provided to you by the publisher. With NFTs, Gods Unchained mimics physical card games by letting players buy, sell, and truly own their cards. Rare digital cards in Gods Unchained can be very valuable and have real monetary value.
• Gods Unchained’s enriching lore and storylines begin with a meeting of the Gods in the highest of Nine Realms, a Citadel where a god is an idea personified, a manifestation of one of the six domains of power that underlie the cosmos. The stories and legends are one of the most fascinating aspects of the game that will be greatly appreciated by fans of the fantasy genre.

Gods Unchained official gameplay trailer

Gameplay

• In Gods Unchained, players will buy, build, and collect cards that can be used to construct decks and battle against other players. The game seems simple at first, but grows increasingly complex as players dive deeper into the strategy and the synergies between cards and decks that can be used to counter a wide variety of tactics.
• When players start the game, they are each given 70 cards for free that together make up the Welcome Set. These cards can be sorted into six prebuilt decks that represent the different characteristics of the six Gods. Players will also be given an allotment of Core cards that can be used to customize/personalize these pre-made starter decks.
• There are currently three gameplay modes: solo, ranked, and direct challenge.
  • Solo: Play against the computer
  • Ranked: Play against other players online who are automatically selected and climb through the rankings to earn rewards
  • Direct challenge: Challenge your friends and battle them.

Gods Unchained Gameplay Tutorial

1. Cards

Figure 1: Cards in Gods Unchained

• Cards represent the creatures and spells players utilize in their fight for ultimate victory. Players win by reducing the opposing God’s health to 0 while preventing their opponent from doing the same to them.
• Gods Unchained cards can be traded at ImmutableX and TokenTrove marketplaces at a floor price of $0.02 per card. Card packs containing 5 cards each are sold in Rare, Epic, Legendary, and Shiny-Legendary variations. As of this writing, those packs sell for $2.06, $5.80, $20.72, and $124.39.
• Since its launch, the game has released and completely sold through two expansion sets (consist of a finite amount of NFTs, making them more scarce than the core game’s cards), the Genesis set and the Trial of the Gods set, with the total revenue generated by both sales exceeding $10M.

Card Anatomy

Figure 2: Gods Unchained card elements diagram

Figure 3: Gods Unchained’s Card Anatomy description

Card Types

• Creature cards: Can attack other players’ cards and/or god. Players can have up to six creatures on the board at a time. A creature is destroyed when its health is reduced to 0, and is sent to the void (home of dead creatures and cast spells).
• Spell cards: cast an instant effect. They can do anything from dealing damage, healing, or improving cards stats or abilities. Once a spell card has been used, the card is sent to the void.
• Relic cards: Allows a player’s god to attack an opponent directly, or use a special abilityn. The relic is destroyed when its health reaches 0.

Figure 4: Three types of Gods Unchained cards

Card Quality

• Plain: A plain quality card is a non-NFT card. The card is often earned by playing the game and is usable in-game but cannot be traded on the marketplace. If you have two or more of the same plain card, you can use $GODS and flux to fuse these together in The Forge, transforming them into a meteorite NFT card.
• Shiny: Any card that is meteorite or higher quality (Shadow, Gold and Diamond) are NFT cards that can be traded on the marketplace. Shiny card is a way of adding rarity to a card for collectors on top of the “rarity” trait.

Figure 5: Gods Unchained card quality

????Cards in Gods Unchained are diverse in character and elements. This gives players a practically infinite number of opportunities to find their own creative solutions to different decks, and constantly come up with new strategies to gain victory, thus keeping the game more exciting and engaging. However, some fear that, like Hearthstone, Gods Unchained players will have to spend a lot of money on rare cards to be able to win games, thus turning it into a pay-to-win game. But the team has been working on a balancing mechanism to ensure players don’t need to spend lots of money to build a highly competitive deck.

2. Gameplay

Figure 6: Gods Unchained gameplay loop

• A player will be given 70 free cards that make up the Welcome Set when they first start playing the game. The player then battles an opponent with a deck that fits the theme of one of the six gods, whether it’s one of the pre-made decks or one of their own design, and take turns back and forth with their opponent.
• Each deck contains 30 cards. Players can have up to 2 copies of the same card in their deck, and only one of each Legendary card, as these cards are more powerful. Players are also given an allotment of Core cards which can be used to edit their decks.

Figure 7: Gods and their powers in Gods Unchained

Figure 8: The 6 gods of Gods Unchained

• Each player’s god starts with 30 health. The goal is simply to kill the opponent’s god before they do the same to yours.
• Players begin each turn with a certain amount of mana to spend on playing cards or using god abilities, and the amount gradually increases over the course of the game, allowing for more powerful cards later in the game. One clever twist that Gods Unchained introduces is a mana lock that slows down mana generation after the first five turns, allowing for more back-and-forth before top-tier cards come into play.
• Players have a time limit for actions on their turn. If the timer runs out, play passes to the other player. Players who don’t end their turn before the timer ends and receive a time penalty on their next turn. If a player runs out of cards to draw, they begin taking damage every time they should draw. Their mana locks also begin closing back up, one per turn. Play continues until one god is taken below one health.

Figure 9: Gods Unchained battle board

• Players can earn more card packs to build up decks by several ways:
  • Play game and level up: By playing Ranked or Constructed games, players will level up and earn card packs. These will drop Common Core cards that can be used to expand decks or fused together to create higher quality, tradable versions in the Forge.
  • Weekend Ranked Event rewards: Card packs and items can also be earned through Weekend Ranked tournaments. The rewards from these tournaments rotate with each game season, but can be a good place to earn items that aren’t usually unlocked via conventional means, such as expansion card packs.
  • Purchase expansion packs: These cards are only available for purchase for a limited time (during the run of a particular season) and may not be sold again. Once these packs are sold out, the best way to get them is to trade with other players on the Immutable X Marketplace.
  • Trade with other players: The Immutable X or TokenTrove marketplaces are the go-to places to buy and sell individual cards and items.

Gods Unchained deck building guide

????In Gods Unchained, instead of relying on an initial one-off purchase, the game is free to play with optional monetized content and features that work to enrich and expand the game, without being a requirement to play. The game is also easy to learn as some players even manage to reach the top of the leaderboards in a few weeks. Gods Unchained has a large user base because it is enjoyable to play in and of itself and the play-to-earn potential and card ownership are attractive draws to give players both a fun and rewarding experience.

3. Leveling up & Reward Systems

Fusion

• Players can fuse cards at The Forge. As players rank up in Gods Unchained by playing games, players are rewarded with Core packs. Once a player collects enough copies of a Core card, they can fuse those cards to create a higher quality NFT version that can be sold.
• Currently, players can Fuse a card 4 times, from Plain, through Meteorite, Shadow, and Gold to the highest quality, Diamond.

Rewards

• Experience: For every match played, win or lose, players gain experience points. The longer the game, the more experience players will gain. The reward varies from 250 to 400 EXP and in case of victory there is a bonus of 100 EXP.
• Flux
  • In-game resource that cannot be bought or sold and is earned by playing the Ranked Constructed game mode or by winning Gauntlet of the Gods. Players may run the Gauntlet to earn Flux on a daily basis.
  • Players also accumulate Stars while playing Ranked matches. Stars are used at the in-game store to purchase special versions of Core and Welcome cards.
  • Flux will be awarded for a player’s first 3 wins with each god per day, making it possible to receive Flux 18 times per day. The higher the players’ rank and the more Gauntlet games they’ve won, the more flux they will receive.
  • Flux is used (in conjunction with $GODS) to fuse two identical cards into a new singular card of a higher quality at The Forge.
• Cards: After reaching a new experience level, the player receives a pack of Core cards. These can be standard, epic, or legendary, depending on the level.
• $GODS: At present, the game holds a weekend ranked competition that rewards players based on their performance. Players get to prove their mettle to the Gods' community and win some goodies in the process. $GODS are rewarded according to the points players earn per week, and players must complete all these requirements to receive any points:
  • Play 20 or more ranked games
  • Win 7 or more ranked games
  • Pass four rounds of each ranked game
  • Reach rank 4 (Purified Iron) by the end of the event
  • Play ranked games with at least 17 unique opponents out of the 20 games played

????Alternate game options and a meaningful ranking system outside of the weekend tournaments are two things that Gods Unchained is missing. But the team plans on delivering both of these features and more in the future in the form of Quests, Seasonal rewards or Special game modes.

Game Economy

1. Revenue Streams

God Unchained offers a free-to-play model so there no initial investment needed to participate in the game. To create a sustainable economy that empowers players to earn through play, the project has many in-game purchases to generate revenue for the whole ecosystem.

• NFT “expansion set” sales: Once purchased, these items can be used by players within Gods Unchained to build competitive decks and play the game, or traded with other users outside the game like any other token. Since launch, GU has released and completely sold out two expansion sets, the Genesis set and the Trial of the Gods set, with the total combined revenue exceeding $10 million.
• Secondary market royalties: These are added to the staking pool rewards. Different cards have different fee percentages. As the trading economy grows, the revenue in royalty fees will grow alongside it. This will be a primary source of revenue for the game.

2. Earning Mechanics

• Gods Unchained features a couple of play-to-earn mechanics. The first comes from simply playing the game. With each Ranked match, players gain experience, which counts towards their account level. At every level up, players receive a Core card pack as a reward. Players can then craft Meteorite level Core cards, which can be sold to other players to earn profits.
• The second play-to-earn feature is the weekend tournament mode which begins on Friday morning every weekend. During this event, players worldwide do battle in the Arena where they compete for glory and prizes. Rewards include packs from the Core set and the latest Expansion set. Also, Mythic level players who finish with one of the top 10 overall rankings, receive additional prize packs at the end of the weekend.

3. Token Utility

$GODS tokens are designed to be Gods Unchained’s primary reward mechanism. The primary purpose of the $GODS token is to serve as an in-game currency being used by players to purchase new card packs and chests, craft their own NFT cards, and earn staking rewards.

Figure 10: Inflationary and Deflationary factors of $GODS

????Similar to existing in-game currencies, $GODS tokens will be rewarded to users through play; however, unlike some currencies, $GODS will be scarce and tradable. True digital ownership is an important foundation, but to truly change the way web3 games are viewed, it needs to be paired with a sustainable play-and-earn system. By creating continuous demand and sinks for $GODS tokens, Gods Unchained will build a sustainable economy and continue to attract more and more users.

4. Token Allocation

Figure 11: $GODS token distribution

Figure 12: $GODS vesting schedule

Team

Immutable is an industry leading, VC-funded blockchain company backed by Naspers, Galaxy Digital, Coinbase, Bitkraft Ventures, Fabric Ventures, and Alameda Research. There are over 50 full-time employees working on Gods Unchained. The team consists of talents from top tier companies including Riot Games, Electronic Arts, Goldman Sachs, and many more.

Chris Clay - Game Director

• Led MTGA from its troubled first playable release to a genre favorite that generated over $120M in revenue in its first year.
• He has spent his career pushing the boundaries of technology, from early pioneering in 3D character design to laying the groundwork for massive multiplayer games at Turbine.

Matt Aldrich - Lead Art Director

• Has extensive experience Art Directing games in Europe, America, and Asia, and has been focused on delivering world class game art for multiple triple-A titles for over 20 years.
• Throughout his career, Aldrich has worked on industry leading franchises including Tomb Raider, Assassins Creed, James Bond, Lord of the Rings, FIFA, and Star Wars.

Derek Proud - Producer

• A games industry veteran with more than 20 years experience. He’s worked on many licensed titles such as Harry Potter, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Cars, Spongebob Squarepants, and Jimmy Neutron.
• He was both designer and producer for Big Beach Sports on Wii, which sold more than 2 million units worldwide.

Arash Mahboubi - Crypto Product Lead

• He’s been building the core technology that governs the Ethereum network for over 4 years and previous to that helped bring blockchain Dapps to mainstream consumers.

Nic Watt - VP of Product

• He had worked at Riot Games as Lead User Experience Designer for League of Legends. Prior, he had worked as a lead designer at EA, and founded his own studio, Nnooo, which he was involved with for nearly 12 years.

Partners & Investors

• In September 2019, Immutable raised $15M in Series A funding. The round was led by investment firms Naspers Ventures and Galaxy Digital EOS VC Fund, with participation from Apex Capital Partners. The funds will be utilized to further develop Gods Unchained and to build an open-source blockchain platform for developers.
• Gods Unchained is also backed by Coinbase, Continue Capital, Nirvana Capital and OKEx Blockdream Ventures. With the support from such prominent names, Gods Unchained has the potential to deliver a high quality game that can credibly stand next to major industry titles as well as offer a friendly on-ramp to improve adoption, education, and sentiment around blockchain-based technologies.

Figure 13: Gods Unchained partners & investors

Community

Figure 14: Social media statistics of Gods Unchained and other prominent projects (Source: SparkToro)

• Gods Unchained has already been in development for 4 years and has attracted a large number of players since the initial launch in 2018. The team prioritizes the gameplay first by regularly updating content and adding new cards with a balancing phase.
• The game’s Discord and Twitter channels are engaging and well-organized. Content, in-game art and events are constantly updated there. Their community is also quite active.
• Gods Unchained has organized many events and programs to attract new users and reward long-term users with many attractive prizes.
  • Viral Referral Loop provides a tangible reward to existing players for bringing in quality new players.
  • Engagement Loop creates engagement features that continuously bring players back to engage with the game.
  • The Blessing of the Gods P2E event gives the community a great opportunity to earn $GODS while competing against other mortals. **
  • Weekend Ranked Event is hosted every weekend which offers weekly rewards based on players’ performance.
• Gods Unchained has been rapidly rising in popularity, with more players and sales every month in its first four years. The team has done an excellent job promoting the game and managing their community. They are also looking to release a mobile version of the game that will allow them to reach many more players worldwide.

Gods Unchained official Wiki

https://godsunchained.fandom.com/wiki/Gods_Unchained_Wiki