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Project Highlights

• Project Eluüne: StarGarden is a team co-op MMORPG built with Unreal and powered by Solana that is accessible to everyone.
• Project Eluüne features a Free-to-Play model, taking a mass-market approach that does not require any initial investment or blockchain knowledge before playing the game. The emphasis in StarGarden is truly social gameplay as every aspect of gameplay encourages cooperation, cooperative rewards, cooperative progression, and social bonding.
• The project has a new approach to tokenomics by using multiple utility tokens - 120 in total to increase interdependence between players.
• Project Eluüne has 23K Twitter followers and 13K Discord members.
• Project Eluüne has built a team of crypto-native developers and game industry veterans with over 20 years of experience in shipping mobile and AAA titles and who created games like Call of Duty, Dota, Dota2, World of Tanks Blitz, Gods Unchained.
• In August 2022, Project Eluüne announced its expansion to Polygon. The project also acquired a license to use Unreal Engine 5 (UE5), the world’s most open and advanced real-time 3D creation tool for photorealistic visuals and immersive experiences.
• Project Eluüne successfully raised $5 million in seed funding round at a valuation of $35M led by C2 Ventures. Also among the participants are Polygon, 6th Man, Lightspeed, Everyrealm, Morningstar, Avalaunch, Big Brain Holdings, Ancient8, etc.
• A total of 7,027 Founder’s StarGardens, secured on the Solana blockchain, have been available for minting since Oct 27, 2021 at 3 $SOL. The current floor price is 7.6 $SOL. The total volume sits at 11.1K $SOL and there are currently only 61 listed on Magic Eden.
• Project Eluüne has an upcoming free NFT mint for the Aurahma companion, which will be co-hosted with certain partners.
• They also recently launched Mission Control, a browser based dashboard where players can gain XP, lvl up, unlock rewards, track their progress, and build social status within the ecosystem. Soulbound NFTs called Eluüne IDs will function as passports, chronicling the evolution of a Web3 game universe that flourishes along with its communities.
• The game is currently in development for PC first, with plans to port to iOS and Android. Closed beta for StarGarden owners is estimated to be ready by 2023.

Project Eluüne concept art

Overview

• Being a team-based, auto-battler MMO with RPG mechanics, Project Eluüne requires users to devise strategies to recruit, craft, train, optimize and merge powerful creatures to battle and build structures on their StarGarden, as they repair a shattered world and uncover its many secrets. The game focuses on Tribe vs Environment (TvE) and Tribe vs Tribe (TvT) battle mechanics.
• By minting a Founding StarGarden, users become the owners of a play space, as well as the leaders of the Tribes that populate them. A player’s StarGarden levels up along with its members, permanently improving Play-&-Own opportunities for anyone on it. This mechanic is unique in that, the more a StarGarden is used, the more powerful it becomes, thereby unlocking new gameplay options and enhancing its overall value and utility.

Figure 1: Project Eluüne concept art

Gameplay

• Most of the game occurs within each StarGarden: a dynamic, evolving land, owned by one person who hosts a Tribe of players. Players will be able to navigate their avatars in the StarGarden to various game locations (Markets, Creature shops, Domain arenas, etc.) and access other game features.
• There are a total of 20 Domains and 1,000 Creatures in a StarGarden. Players will first gain access to 8 Domains and 8 Creatures. As the Tribe successfully completes Quests, more Creatures and Domains are unlocked.

1. Creatures

• Players can unlock, recruit, purchase, sell, and deploy creatures in battles. Creatures can be insects, animals, high-tech machines, heroes, demigods, specialists of fantasy races, or even starships. 80% of the Creatures in the game are non-NFTs that anyone, given enough time, can get. 20% of the Creatures are Valaan NFTs.
• Each Creature has a class, Domain origin, default ability, and special ability.
• There are 1,000 Creatures in each StarGarden that can be unlocked over time from level 0 (player’s first Creature) to level 60 in Arrival Domains, level 20 to 80 in Mystical Domains and level 40 to 100 in Hallowed and Forbidden Domains.
• When players start the game they have Creatures at size 1 and 2. As they level up they unlock new Creatures of higher sizes and can climb all the way up to size 100,000. The Creatures get dramatically larger and/or more powerful and/or more complex as their size increases.

Figure 2: Creatures: Nectar Fey - POD - The Malformed - Prayer Golem

2. Gameplay

• Tve (PvE) Mode: Players play in Tribes, of 5-40 players traveling across various Domains (ecosystems) to complete quests. Strategy in terms of Creature placement on the arena board is of utmost importance. By winning quests, players will be rewarded in Experience Points, Ingredients, Domain Progress, and Aurah (personal Creature currency). The harder the quest, the greater the rewards.
• TvT (PvP) Mode: Tribe Battles happen 8 times per day, or once every 3 hours. Each match is announced 24 hours in advance, giving players time to allocate their Creatures and asses the opposing Guild’s StarGarden. Guilds will have to come up with clever counter-strategies against opponents to win.

Figure 3: Project Eluüne gameplay loop

????The game prioritizes sociability, a core value that was lacking in the first generation of Web3 Games and even Web2 games at large. Every aspect of gameplay encourages cooperation, cooperative rewards, cooperative progression, and social bonding. It also uses geolocation so players can find neighbors to play with, to cultivate real-world friendships and communities as well as digital. By giving players ownership over the StarGardens, in a sense they own the game itself, and they are free to organize tournaments as they wish.

NFTs

The first collection of Project Eluüne are the Founding StarGardens which were minted October 27, 2021 at 3 $SOL. The current floor price is 7.6 $SOL. The total volume sits at 11.1K $SOL and there are currently only 61 NFTs listed on Magic Eden, a sign of the willingness of holders to play rather than trade. Users can also purchase StarGardens on Fractal, Magic Eden and OpenSea.

1. StarGardens & Domains

• StarGardens are plots of land floating over Eleriah’s surface. Each StarGarden is the home of an eSports team. To own a StarGarden, players must purchase them on the secondary market or convert a Public StarGarden into an Owned StarGarden by purchasing it on a first come, first served basis.

Figure 4: StarGarden NFT

• Each StarGarden has 5 levels of rarity: Tangled, Abiding, Arcane, Empyrean and Cosmic which are is represented by the symbol’s outer circle.

Figure 5: StarGarden rarity tiers, visualized

???? The difference between land in Project Eluüne and other games is that owners don’t tax players in any way. The relationship between owners and players is 100% consensual and synergistic, and there are no fees, bonds, or commitments in either direction.

This dynamic builds camaraderie between StarGarden owners and the players by aligning their incentives. Since a StarGarden’s player capacity increases over time, a good owner should always be looking to recruit new players and retain the ones they already have.

• StarGarden’s various locations, races, and techno-nature themes have been divided into 20 known regions called Domains. Each Domain has different biomes, lore, and Creatures. Domains have 4 tiers of rarity that are Arrival, Mystical, Hallowed and Forbidden.
• Titles are also rare and powerful NFTs that are Domain specific. They can be linked to a player account to boost how the player is displayed in-game, and generate Affinity in their Domain.

Figure 6: Domain Paths

• In each Domain, tribes-mates cooperate to complete quests within a time limit. Successful quests will increase progress towards completion of the Domain Challenge. Such progress is permanent and makes the StarGarden more powerful.

Figure 7: Domain Progression loop

• The successful completion of quests and Domain Challenges are visually represented by Structures built on the StarGarden called Domain Structures. These Structures will have different aesthetics: since quests are Domain specific, Domain Structures look different depending on how much of a Domain’s Progression Path has been unlocked.

2. Aurahma (Free Mint)

The Aurahma - playful spirits are found in the world of Eleriah

• The Aurahma are ethereal beings made of Aurah and these playful spirits are found in the world of Eleriah. Aurahma will accompany players on their journey across the StarGardens.
• Each Aurahma has their own distinct personality, which can evolve as players evolve within the Project Eluüne universe. Players will also be able to upgrade Aurahma to give it added utility: it will bring its owner many gifts — on a recurring basis — in the form of NFTs, ingredients and cosmetics.

Aurahma NFTs

• Players can acquire an Aurahma through an upcoming mint on Fractal.is, forging them in the Prelude, or through certain partners through a special free mint...

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???? By introducing the Aurahma PFP and the Eluüne IDs within Mission Control, Project Eluüne allows players to foster their identity early in order to receive greater rewards in the future. Players can show off what they own (StarGardens, Aurahma NFTs, creatures, etc.) and who they are through their StarGarden and domain affiliations and their activity within the ecosystem. As they progress through Eluüne’s world, their identity with evolve alongside their Aurahma. They will be seen, and remembered.

3. Creature: Valaans

• Valaans are powerful Creatures from the ancient past of Eleriah—rare and distinct from the other Creatures encountered in the Domains.
• Valaans have unique special abilities that a clever Guild can use to open up new gameplay strategies. They also offer an unparalleled opportunity to flex.
• Crafting: Players craft Valaans by using Ingredient tokens. These NFT Creatures have complex and regularly updated metadata that will allow them to grow over time, and this progress will be visible in the marketplace if the owner chooses to sell them.
• Training: Training is a mechanic where players can form a special bond with a Valaan. In order to train a Valaan, players must deploy it over the course of many battles and keep it in their Creature roster. By completing the training the Valaan becomes more powerful.
• Merging: Merging involves taking three of the same Valaans to create the next higher-level Valaan. A Valaan in training cannot be merged until its training is completed.
• Collective crafting: The most powerful and valuable Valaans could require 10 years of individual labor to create. In the game, a Tribe of 40 players has the potential to collectively generate 10 years of labor in 3 months and share the spoils of selling that Creature on the market.

Tokenomics

• Project Eluüne has a new approach to tokenomics by using multiple utility tokens to increase interdependence between players. Players will go from one token to another as they progress, which creates high trade volume, balancing the value of each token, and amplifying StarGarden census growth as new players join to replace veteran players when as they get promoted. This is amplified in two ways:
  • There is a limit to the number of tokens that can be earned by Guild members each day
  • Each team has access to limited types of tokens
• The team is building a self-regulating economy with the ability to automatically react to economic disruptions to restore homeostasis. When there are not enough players in a Domain, the value of the tokens will go up, incentivizing players to follow that Domain’s Progression Path and balance the economy in the process. By contrast, if there are too many players in one Domain, the value of those tokens will decrease to incentivize movement.
• There are about 120 tokens in the game. In the first year, no one will get to the top 60 tokens because as they gain access to more advanced tokens, they lose access to the earlier tokens. It may take a player 3.5 years to get to the endgame content, as a means to retain a long-term fan base and sustainable game economy.

Figure 8: Project Eluüne tokenomics diagram

Project Eluüne tokens and use cases

Team

With a team of experts from reputable games such as Call of Duty, Gods Unchained World of Tanks, and many more, Project Eluüne will surely reach its game design goal to create meaningful new relationships between players.

Cedric Gamelin - Founder & CEO

• Shipped 18 VR/AR/MR experiences for AT&T, PBS, Cox, Google, WB, and Mozilla. Has been designing the vision and IP of Project Eluüne since 2016.

Meghan McWilliams - Founder & COO

• Director of Development at XR Studio working with AT&T, Wall Street Journal, and Mozilla. Co-founder of Women in NFTs.

Ramin Shokrizade - Founder, Game&Economic Design

• Design team leader for game economies & metagames. Microsoft, Mythic, CCP, Take 2, Wargaming (World Of Warships), and Immutable (Gods Unchained).

Craig Allen - Chief Strategy Officer

• Founder & CEO Spark Unlimited, the studio that built the first Call of Duty, GM Jim Henson Interactive, SVP Disney Interactive.

Craig McKerson - Head of Studio & Production

• 25 years of production shipping AAA including The Martian VR, Jurassic World VR, Medal of Honor, Lost Planet 3 and also a co-founder of the studio that shipped the first Call of Duty.

Steve Skelton - Head of Game Design

• Team leader with 18+ years experience in AAA including Medal of Honor Frontline, and Call of Duty.

Dave Prout - VP of Operations & Product

• Joining us from Epic Games Dave was also one of the co-founders of Spark Unlimited, the studio that built the first Call of Duty (previously Kabam, EA, Certain Affinity)

JT James - Head of Systems Design

• 8 years on the game design team that shipped Dota and Dota2.

Menouer Matili - Head of Blockchain

• Built the Marketplace program for Aurory, a P2E game company that raised $100M in 2021.

Jesse Helton - Head of Game Engineering

• Shipped more than 75 games (previously Sega & Zinga)

Derek Pastuszek - Chief Story Architect

• Award-winning writer/filmmaker, works shown at Tribeca, the White House. Writer on Peacock’s upcoming TV show, The Resort (NBCUniversal).

Community

Project Eluüne social statistics compared to other projects (Twitter, SparkToro, Discord, Telegram)

• Project Eluüne is still in its earliest stages of development. To engage with its community, the project has organized AMAs, airdrops and giveaway events. For example, the project airdropped a number of evolving smart NFTs called Eye of Eleriah, offering players opportunities to “lock in” their NFT or allow it to continue to cycle into new expressions. This has stimulated much conversation around preferences for specific characters or items.
• Project Eluüne has recently launched their Mission Control, a browser based dashboard where users can choose, track and record their progress across the entire Project Eluüne universe (games, mediums, experiences). Players will be able to do missions, collect their SoulBound visa, and start progressing through the beginning of the skill tree. Mission Control is planned to be a key ongoing pillar of Project Eluüne: “it is a growing living thing that we will iterate on together. We are building this for you hence ultimately the community will determine its fate.”

Figure 9: Eluüne ID, Soulbound NFT

• The project will continuously release new content after its release to keep the game fresh for years of daily play. The content puts focus on the social aspects of the game as players not only play with existing friends but could easily make new friends and feel belonging in their Guilds. This will foster deeper loyalty to the game and its brand.