Inside Grug’s Lair: The Making of Rising Revenant
Special Report: An Interview with Dark Lord Grug on the Origin Story of his New Game Studio
By Scribe.Stark
"I like to push people. There is no weekend for me, and there is no weekend for crypto." - Grug, the Dark Lord
At ETHGLOBAL - London, the Herald caught up with Dark Lord Grug, the founder and creative force behind Grug's Lair Game Studio.
Grug’s jump into crypto and “degeneracy,” began in 2017 when he was a hedge fund analyst and fundamentals trader. Inspired by the popularity of NFTs in the summer of 2021, Grug created Grug’s Lair as a Play-to-Earn gaming guild, combining his hedge fund experience with his passion for gaming.
After two years of watching the space and technology evolve, Grug has gone all-in with fully onchain games, transforming the Lair into a full game studio aiming to create innovative, decentralized gaming experiences that resonate with a global audience.
Dive in, reader, into an exposé on Grug's Lair, a Game Studio building Rising Revenant, an upcoming game in the Realms ecosystem, built on Starknet.
The studio transformation began with an offhand remark from the man who needs no introduction, Loaf. In September 2023, Loaf stated that a game prototype could be developed in a month with Dojo, a provable game engine and toolchain for building onchain games. Naturally, Grug accepted the challenge and enlisted game developer Alex Halo with a simple directive: "Let's do this. Let's see what happens."
While Grug is a proficient game builder in his own right, game design can be complex. Grug’s Lair expanded quickly with engineering and creative hires. The team currently consists of the following:
Alex Halo: Game Developer
Sniper: Art Director
Ben J Amin: Cairo Developer
Jamie: Marketing Director
Syn: Product Manager
Grug: Game Designer
Grug's primary role is to lead game design within Grug’s Lair. He has had the opportunity to work with many new game developers and has found that some are wary of competing against fellow DAO members for an existing player base. Grug, however, is unconcerned with this, arguing that there is plenty of room for all kinds of games. Right now, 18 games are in development, many of which are turn-based strategy games. While these types of games work well with current onchain constraints, capabilities on Starknet are changing quickly. His strategy is to develop casual games that don't demand much time from players. Grug argues that many of the games in the Realms ecosystem need deep commitment. Loot Survivor, for example, requires that top players plan 5, 10, or even 15 moves ahead. He wants to create a game that is different from the intensity of Loot Survivor and the endless expanses of Eternum, a genuinely infinite game, as Ronan Sanford of Conquest.eth coined it in his 2022 article fittingly titled “Infinite Games.”
Another way that Grug approaches games differently than other game studios is his high level vision. Lately, discussions about Web3 gaming have concluded that games should begin to target more traditional gamers to gain mainstream acceptance. With Rising Revenant, Grug wants to turn this thesis on its head and target the so-called “degenerates” who are already attracted to the space.
The team is heavily influenced by the Octalysis Framework by Yu-kai Chou, a renowned expert in gamification. They’ve interpreted and applied elements from Chou’s work in initial gameplay design to incorporate gameplay volatility and reward structures to keep players engaged. Grug believes this will resonate with degens who appreciate high risk/reward dynamics.
“The main driver will be unpredictability and getting close to a substantial jackpot. I know for a fact that people in crypto are degenerate. They love games where everyone has an equal chance to win, games with no unfair advantages."
Grug is quick to admit that he is a true degenerate himself so who better to build a degenerate-friendly game than the Dark Lord?
Thus, Rising Revenant was born.
Rising Revenant
Embracing the “fuck around and find out” ethos, Loaf's initial challenge resulted in an early game prototype named Rising Revenant produced within a month. By Q4 of 2023, the project gained momentum just in time for the inaugural Frontinus House Grant Round. Grug’s Lair ended up being one of ten projects awarded funding with a 100,000 $LORDS grant to build out their initial game concept. After several months of development, including two closed playtests and a complete rebuild in Unity, on April 1, the game was released for its third and likely final playtest before a full public release later in April.
Game Design and Loop
Rising Revenant is a fast-paced strategy game based on randomness where players vie to be the last player standing when the dust settles. Each game requires an investment from players via $LORDS that goes into a pot that can be won. Players increase their odds of winning by making tactical placement of board assets and trading with others.
The game is centered around player-owned assets/characters called “revenants.” At the start of each game, players purchase one or more revenants, each coming with an outpost that acts as a base of operations. Players then can buy reinforcements making outposts stronger.
After the initial setup, players enter into the game phase. Here, the game intensifies as the map becomes a battlefield. Players use their reinforcements strategically or trade with others to increase survival odds. The demo below showcases what players see during gameplay. The red areas indicate damaged outposts from successful raids.
Random events like goblin attacks, earthquakes, and dragon strikes challenge players in the main game phase. Outposts affected by these events lose hit points and are destroyed when they have no health remaining. Players strategically place reinforcements on weaker outposts to safeguard them from these randomized events.
Outposts within the random event's radius are temporarily unable to receive reinforcements until the attacking event is resolved. Once assigned to an outpost, reinforcements cannot be removed. These can also facilitate peer-to-peer trading with others during the game phase, underscoring the importance of strategic placement. The cost of reinforcements during the game phase is governed by a mechanism known as VRGDA, a dynamic algorithm reflecting supply and demand principles. Consequently, increased purchasing activity drives prices up.
The game ends when there is one survivor left on the board.
The Realms Ecosystem
Grug’s Lair has several other competitive advantages compared to other onchain game studios. First, the Lair was initially created as a Gaming DAO and P2E Guild which brought together many individuals interested in the space. When Grug transitioned the DAO to a game studio there were already many individuals within their community who could contribute early on to its success. Additionally, many of these community members were familiar with happenings within onchain gaming making the transition smooth. Second, Grug has a longstanding relationship with the Realms and larger Starknet ecosystems. He has contributed as a member and participant to Realms since its inception. This relationship has also helped to build trust and respect within Starknet since Realms was one of the first large gaming studios on the L2.
Grug has been a public proponent of building within the Realms ecosystem, not only because he believes the Realms engineers are among the best technically, but also because of their shared view of the importance of fully onchain gaming. For Grug, the importance of onchain gaming comes from his own gaming background. Like Vitalik, and other gamers who were originally attracted to the potential of blockchain technologies, Grug was a long-time World of Warcraft player who saw a centralized company trading community trust for corporate profit. While being a hardcore WoW player does not necessarily result in great success, we hope deep down in our itty bitty gamer hearts that this inspires Grug to succeed in his game builder's voyage.
Closing Comments and Announcements
Grug's Lair Game Studio is preparing for Rising Revenant's Mainnet launch in April. Thanks in large part to their collaboration with the Dojo Game Engine Sensei, it may be the first onchain game built with Unity. Depending on how the game is received, Grug hopes to quickly expand the team and create multiple small, agile groups to develop various titles simultaneously.
Several years into onchain game development, it’s evident that creating standout games requires time and sustained inspiration. When asked about the studio’s end-game goal, Grug aims high: "I want to make Baldur's Gate onchain. It is a tremendous task, but it can happen." He stated that the pace of advancement in the onchain space leaves him incapable of not thinking big and that such experiences will be possible in two to three years.
Grug encourages future onchain game builders to dive into the new technology fearlessly, saying that experimentation leads to discovery. He points out, "If you fuck around, you will find out." He assured us that in communities like Realms and Starknet, there’ll always be someone ready to offer direct technical support and guidance.
We’ll cover our full playthrough of the Rising Revenant later with a detailed look at the game design. For now, join the final playtest and prepare for the mainnet launch!
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