Onboard Web2 and Web3 players to your game with Babylon Wallet.
Balthazar Research Report: The Adventures of Aurory
Contents
7.5/10 – Good
Pre released game score
Antik is in crisis and needs you to venture into the fantasy world of Tokane. Aurory bring a fresh take on the tactical, turn-based Japanese Role Playing Game genre, where you can adventure through a rich and diverse universe. We have high conviction is this project, although we do wish to see more updated information to become both more available and accessible to the public.
Section scores
Background – 8
NFT Game Assets – 7.5
Website – 7
Artwork – 8
Team – 8
Whitepaper – 7.5
Socialnomics – 8
Read More on Explaining the Scoring.
Written by Nicholas Korsgård, Chief Gaming Officer, Kim Bjerkeli, Sigurd Thomassen, and Heidi Anette Laugsand Johansen, Game Strategist, Balthazar Alpha Team
Introduction
Welcome to Aurory, a free-to-play P2E tactical Japanese role-playing game (JRPG) built on Solana. Log in, experience, and explore the rich and diverse universe that the game beholds. Defeat enemies! Fight other players! Capture “Nefties,” climb to the top of the leaderboard, and become the best!
Oh – wait. Hold up. What’s that?
So, there is more to Aurory than that…?
What’s unique about Aurory is its underlying storyline told through high-quality colorful artwork. The game has two features; Player-vs-Environment (PvE) and Player-vs-Player (PvP). The PvE aims to teach players all about crypto, blockchain, and NFTs; Yes, the real-life history of crypto and its people and events! And, of course, the overall story of Aurory, following Max and Helios. In addition to this, the project promises that the game will be social, fun, and challenging at the same time.
The project Aurory is not for the players looking for something simple. It’s for those looking for high-quality, aesthetically pleasing artwork, a deep storyline, and fun and social interaction while still learning about the history of Crypto. It’s not just another crypto game; it’s a game teaching how crypto came to be, all while following Max and Helios’ journey.
Are you ready to be taught Crypto-history in the most innovative but fitting way?
Does Aurory have what it takes? Let’s find out.
TL;DR
- Aurory is a free-to-play P2E tactical JRPG on Solana. The game combines a storytelling mode with deep strategic 3v3 combat. Explore the rich story and expansive universe of Aurory in Antik and Tokané.
- Aurory uses Solana for its blockchain solution, where we find the $AURY token and the NFTs. Since $AURY is a capped token, Aurory balances the economy with its two sub-currencies called OKA and TOKE, which are weekly exchanged for $AURY.
- The team working on Aurory is over 65 people strong and flaunting over three centuries of combined relevant experience. Several team members have helped build titles like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry 4 coming from game studios like Ubisoft, EA, and Gameloft.
- Aurory’s website is simple but effective. The artwork is apparent throughout the page showing the project’s originality. It’s easy to use and gets the message across. Watching it on mobile is a pleasure due to the meticulous effort put into making it look great on mobile devices.
- The artwork is heavily detailed while still maintaining a clean look. The colors are vibrant, and the design is playful. It sets itself apart from other games in GameFi with its chibi-like style.
- The whitepaper is easy to follow and goes into detail about how the various mechanisms like quest-loops, combat, and landmarks work. It also covers how the economy ties it all together and how the game caters to free-to-play and invested players.
- Aurory has a vast community on Twitter and has a very active Discord server.
Background
Aurory is a browser-based JRPG play-and-earn game with a token economy resting on the Solana blockchain.
Lore
Aurory is a world divided. On one end, there is Antik, the center of power and wealth for the upper elite. In this plane of existence, the elite are the masters of all beings populating the world. The subjects toiled under their suppressors, turning twisted, violent, and desperate for release.
The upper echelon of the elite, called the Barons of Antik, caused a financial collapse due to their greed and incompetency. In order to cover the Barons’ mistakes, the citizens of Antik had to pay increased taxes and worked even harder to help get the economy back on its feet.
Satoshi, an unknown hero among the denizens of Antik, devised a solution to Antik’s problems, a decentralized financial system offering freedom to the oppressed. However, the ones in power would never allow for such a thing. Distributing wealth and power would turn the world upside down and deteriorate the Barons’ riches.
Eventually, Satoshi discovered a parallel plane of existence with a world called Tokané. Tokané, a world shaped by some benevolent deity, had creatures called Nefties that lived in symbiosis with nature. Satoshi couldn’t go to Tokané himself, but through a device called a Mintorc, he created a Nefty with the ability to form portals between the worlds. The Nefty called Helios then allowed passage between worlds.
Satoshi revealed Tokané’s existence to the population of Antik, undermining the Barons’ influence and granting those who were brave enough a passage to the other world. Several people leaped at the chance and set out to make a new life for themselves in Tokané. However, the Barons didn’t rest on their laurels and set up an offensive to fight back.
In the clash, the portal to Tokané was damaged, causing instability in the reality matrix, leading to Tokané splintering into parallel shards. Whenever someone traversed the gateway between worlds, they would now enter their own fragment of Tokané. Within each shard, there was now a new world to explore, adventures to be had, and Nefties to recruit. Each sliver has its connection to others, where adventurers can meet at the intersections and compete against each other with their newfound Neftie companions.
However, with the gateway still open to some degree, the Barons send their minions into Tokané, corrupting the Nefties. Adventurers would have to fight off corrupted Nefties with their own squad in hopes of survival and the dream of prosperity in Tokané.
After a strenuous war against the Barons, Satoshi disappeared, splintering into fragments embedded into each shard of Tokané. Following this, what is now known as ‘Vestiges of Power’ started appearing throughout the slivers of Tokané. Stumbling upon one of these would grant adventurers aid in their efforts to purge the Barons from their shards.
Helios, the gatekeeper, had intrinsic knowledge of the Vestiges, but he lost his memory during the shattering. As a matter of serendipity, he got in touch with an adventurer named Max. Together, they take on the magical world of Tokané to restore Helios’ memory and free the people of Antik.
Gameplay
Aurory’s core gameplay is the turn-based tactical JRPG, meaning there is an epic story to be perused, tactical fights to be fought, and rewards to be had for both the invested and free-to-play players.
PvE
Through the main story, you will play as both Max and Helios in Aurorys upcoming adventure mode. You’ll be able to control both of them while roaming the world recruiting new Nefties to your cause. Your greatest adversaries in the game are the aforementioned Barons of Antik, which you’ll have to defeat in battles similar to the PvP format, a 3v3 battle of nefties on a dynamic battlefield.
Your adventure will happen in Tokané. Here you’ll meet a lot of different characters and explore the mysteries within your sliver of the world. A lot of the stories are inspired by real-world crypto characters and events.
Content Update Cycles
For free-to-play games, continuous additions to content are important. Aurory solves this by having development cycles lasting for six months, where new content is added for every cycle, and every cycle is closed off with a world championship PvP event.
The flowchart above describes the content update cycle and indicates which new content you’ll see for every season. Some of the content is as follows.
- New regions
- New characters with backstories and quests
- Revelations about the Aurory universe
- New Nefties
- New rules introduced for additional layers of strategy
At the beginning of a season, there will usually be an antagonist from Antik entering the stage. Often leading to dangerous world events coming to a crescendo at the end of each cycle.
To participate, all players get a “base package” for free every season. A base package enables players to partake in PvE missions and PvP locations, although they will have modifiers on the rewards here. At cycle end, there will be a world championship event where the best players compete for grand prizes.
A dedicated team on the Aurory staff is working on new content for every season, ensuring that the content stays fresh!
World Map
Tokané is divided into different regions, each with its own landmarks. We find villages, castles (PvP), points of interest, and NPCs within the category of landmarks. However, from time to time, you can stumble upon rare Nefties only found in certain regions. You should also beware of the region’s Guardian, a massive Nefty acting as the region’s protector.
Navigating through the world will happen through discovering new landmarks and then having the opportunity to travel back and forth between these locations as they are represented as names and icons on the world map. Time of travel will be determined by the nature of the path as well as if you have the right equipment to take on the journey. However, while on your way, you have to keep an eye out for ambushes from the Barons’ minions. You can avoid the attacks with the right concoction, but acquiring such a potion might not be commonplace. When traversing Tokané, you should always be on the lookout for quests indicated by icons on the map.
Landmarks
When arriving at a landmark, you’ll have to decide whether to enter or continue. If you decide to enter, you could end up on a single-section or multi-section landmark. The single-section landmarks only have one area to visit and walk around in. It’ll have NPCs to talk to, as well as puzzles, objectives, treasure, and combat opportunities.
If you happen to stroll into a multi-section landmark, there will be more depth to the adventure illustrated in the picture below.
Quests
Quests and quest givers are easily identified by their specific icons. You’ll have a logbook where progression and completion can be tracked. The logbook will also highlight the quest rewards and provide you with some clues to hidden treasures that can be found along the way.
Below is a flowchart of a typical quest loop.
Combat
Aurory’s combat is turn-based and between two teams of three Nefties. The fight is played out on a grid in which each team has its home field with a neutral zone separating them. The size and shape of the grid can vary, but usually, each home field is about 7×7 squares and the neutral zone is about 7×3 squares. Some squares called special cells, can be scattered across the battlefield. These types are hype cells, healing cells, and bumper cells. Standing on top of any of these add additional effects to the Neftie, either boosting their hype points, healing some HP, or bouncing them across the map.
A representation and example of the battlefield are displayed below.
The purpose is to knock out all Nefties on the enemy team. Every turn, the Nefties have their chance to perform a move and a skill action. A time track determines the sequence. A battle goes on until all Nefties on one team are knocked out.
Each team has a team leader called a tactician. The tactician determines the possible starting locations for a team. It might also provide passive abilities to the team that adds another layer of strategy to the game. Below is a picture with examples of possible starting positions available for certain tacticians.
Before a fight blasts off, you have to go through the preparation phase. This is where you make a lot of strategic choices and play to your strengths. The phase comes with limited time, so you gotta know what you’re doing and act fast. Your decisions will be drafting your Neftie squad from your collection, picking a tactician to lead them, and determining starting positions for each Neftie before finally choosing your power stones to bring into the fight. These are one-time-use items with minor effects, but if used correctly, they could turn the tides of the battle. Below is a schema of the draft sequence.
Following the preparation phase is the combat phase. Depending on each Neftie’s initiative attribute, the order in which they act is determined by the time track. The player determines which goes first if the initiative is equal within a team. If the initiative is equal with someone from the opposing team, the one with the highest HP goes first.
Every Neftie has its unique set of active and passive abilities. They can move, use a skill, and use items when it’s their turn. If you have a higher-end Neftie with the ability to trigger “reactions,” you could have an even bigger advantage over certain opponents. An example of this could be that team A shoots a projectile, but team B might have a reaction to “intercept projectile.” In some cases, even reactions have reactions.
Given enough time in a battle, the battlefield will start to shrink. This mechanism is implemented to force Nefties close together as the fight progresses to prevent running away and stalling. The tiles outside of the battleground edges will become dangerous and start inflicting damage over time to anyone outside the border. A fight is won when the opposing team is left without any Nefties.
PvP
PvP is in open alpha with rewards already being available.
To participate in PvP battles, you have to acquire a team of three Nefties, either through borrowing from the weekly free-for-alls, hatching eggs, or buying from the marketplace. You would also need to stake a specific amount of $AURY, how much is still to be decided. When these criteria are met, you can start climbing the leaderboard ladder.
If you’re a free-to-play player, you can still work your way to earning $AURY and NFTs in the PvE mode before eventually having enough to do PvP.
The PvP mode will have month-long seasons, resetting every month. The purpose is to foster an esports community with competitive players and streamers. The best players will, of course, be handsomely rewarded according to their ladder placements.
If you’re the best of the best, the Aurory World Championship might be for you. To participate in this high-end tournament, you must pay for entrance with a golden ticket. Golden tickets are obtainable in three ways. Either through winning regular tournaments, getting lucky with rare drops in PvE, or purchasing from the marketplace.
Expeditions
While waiting for the adventure mode, you can send your Aurorians on expeditions. Expeditions is a game mode where you send one, two, three, or five Aurorians on a mission to explore the world of Aurory. On these expeditions, you might find $AURY, skins, NFTs, Nefty eggs, and in-game items.
Read more about how you can participate in expeditions here.
Antibotting
Bots have been a plague in many a game over the past two decades. Aurory intends to minimize this problem as much as possible. In GameFi especially, botting is very impactful to the economy as it generally leads to a mass extraction of value, far eclipsing the inflow.
One of Aurory’s solutions is to add several “gates” a bot would have to surpass to make it harder to claim rewards. Although it’s not perfect, it will likely be a significant inhibitor to bot scalability. The flowchart below illustrates the mechanisms that are put in place.
Playtesting
There is a playable lobby called the Nexus, which is a sneak peek into what Aurory will feel like when ready as a complete game. The game is web-based and has both great sound effects and graphics. When running around in the Nexus as Helios, it feels really smooth, although there is not much to do, especially if you don’t have Nefties to fight with. It is open for everyone to try and can be found here: https://app.aurory.io/.
The battle mode has also recently been added, which allows you to test your mettle against the computer or other players. Go through a quick tutorial before you get access to training and multiplayer modes.
You start by selecting a team of three Nefties from the nine available to you for free.
The Nefties fill different meta roles like assassins, mages, glass cannons, and tanks.
With some practice and time, we see the potential for deep strategic gameplay extending far beyond the typical 3v3 battle games.
We appreciate the focus Aurory has on introducing new players coming to the game through the detailed tutorial. In this space, a tutorial isn’t commonplace and is often overlooked or not prioritized in early access versions of various games. Apart from this, the sound effects and music are lovely and well done.
Economy
As we’ve seen the past year in GameFi, very few, if any, have managed to dial in their game economy for long-term sustainability while still providing value for early supporters. Knowing this, the crew behind Aurory has put a lot of emphasis on their economy. The biggest challenge was making the game available for both invested and free-to-play players and letting them all participate in the economy. Their solution is built upon the three pillars of engagement, scarcity, and tokenomics.
Engagement
Engagement is important to keep players engaged and will likely sink money back into the ecosystem. The PvE experience with seasonal content updates will likely keep and bring people back into the game over time. Providing rewards from quests and other PvE activities is the main source of wealth in the economy. It allows players to build themselves up and eventually be ready for competitive play.
The PvP aspect is fair, socially engaging, and competitive. It has a low barrier of entry and only rewards players that have progressed a bit in the rankings. $AURY, skins, and rare items are the main rewards in PvP.
Scarcity
Many web3 games in the past year have had issues with inflationary economies. Aurory intends to deal with inflation by having a fixed main token supply that is balanced by two in-game sub-currencies. The two sub-currencies allow fine-tuning the reward distribution between invested and free-to-play players.
An example of such balance would be that only invested players can loot eggs, power stones, and battle items, whereas free-to-play players only earn $AURY.
Deflation
There are several planned mechanisms in place to deal with inflation in Aurory. Eggs and Nefties are the most inflationary assets, and the team has implemented mechanisms to deal with the eventual saturation and over-supply of said assets. Nefties can be burned through several avenues, such as sacrificing a Neftie to modify the attributes of another one of the same species. Loss of Nefties through Heroic Dungeons, where death in combat is permanent, and Deathmatch mode in PvP tournaments. Regarding eggs, the drop rate will be modulated to meet demand curves over time.
Tokenomics
The $AURY token is the multi-utility ecosystem token representing a financial stake in the game that plays into PvP modes via staking and will eventually be used to access dungeons. The supply is fixed to 100,000,000 tokens and can be earned through both PvP, PvE, and staking.
The token distribution and vesting schedule are depicted in the image above.
The economy has two sub-currencies, OKA and TOKE, working as balancers for the $AURY token. At the end of every week, the tokens are exchanged for a corresponding amount of $AURY. OKA is used for financially invested players, whereas TOKE is for free-to-play players.
OKA is rewarded to victors in both PvE and PvP, and the amount is determined depending on the difficulty. Recently the reward distribution changed in which both OKA and TOKE can be earned depending on the “rating score” of the winning player. For TOKE which is the free-to-play token, you have to be above a certain rating score in order to get any at all. The distribution can be seen below.
All forms of buying and selling on the marketplace will be denominated in $AURY. It is also required as a fee for hatching eggs to obtain new Nefties. A certain amount of $AURY must be staked to participate in PvP. All of these sinks contribute to a more sustainable ecosystem; even though the token is already capped, some of the $AURY is recycled back into reward pools.
Once the game is released and the $AURY supply is further distributed, it can be used as a vote in the governance of the community treasury. This is expected to be at least 2-3 years from now.
Below is a flowchart of $AURY.
Post FTX Collapse
With the recent drama around FTX and the collapse of the surrounding ecosystem, Aurory also took some hits to the treasury. However, due to foresight from the founders, most of the treasury was moved to cold wallets earlier this year, resulting in only 15% of the treasury being wiped out due to FTX. Unfortunately, due to liquidity for market making, they couldn’t take it all off of the exchange, hence the 15% loss. With little liquidity, the focus forward is to add liquidity to various DEXes and get listed with other large market makers and exchanges; this does, however, take some time due to the overall market being in turmoil.
Source: https://aurory.substack.com/p/state-of-aurory-address-november
NFT Game Assets
Aurory bases its asset economy on four pillars, all tied together by the $AURY token. The main assets are Aurorians and Tacticians, Eggs and Nefties, In-game Items, and Land. These can all be found through the Aurory marketplace, found here, or in the Aurorian collection on OpenSea, found here.
Aurorians
Aurorians can be bought from the marketplace for $AURY. The Aurorians are more than profile picture NFTs and will also have utility in the game. Holding an Aurorian will grant a unique visual identity in the game, early access to the game, and boosted rewards over free-to-play players. There are also other benefits, such as airdrops, land sale priority, and control of the community-run DAO. Aurorians can be found on OpenSea in Aurory’s collection. There are 10,000 NFTs in the collection, and the total trade volume is over 140,000 SOL which is one of the largest in the Solana ecosystem.
The DAOry
The DAOry is a DAO for Aurory run by the community. Holders of Aurorian NFTs are in control of the treasury, which is funded with 1,000 SOL from the initial sale, 1.75% of Aurorian sales via the marketplace royalties, 5% of the total token supply over a given period, and a not yet determined percentage of in-game marketplace fees.
The DAOry is one of the largest treasuries in the Solana ecosystem. Therefore, the team was meticulous in setting it up. The Aurorians has already passed several community votes involving treasury spending.
Eggs and Nefties
Nefties and Eggs can be bought from the marketplace or earned in PvE and PvP. Eggs would have to be hatched by using $AURY.
In-Game Items
Throughout your adventure, you’ll stumble upon items of varying rarity and function. Items are obtained from PvE, such as dungeons and completing quests. Items can also be traded on the marketplace. Most items are cosmetic, but gameplay items will gradually become more commonplace as you progress through the game. Upgrading your Nefties with items could make the difference in an equally matched fight.
Power Stones are one class of items. These stones unlock tactical abilities but can only be used once. You’ll have two slots available for Power Stones, and thousands of combinations with the stones will be available. At laboratories, you can extract Neftie essence, either through burning a Neftie or Power Stones. Successful attempts will yield you rare items. A failed attempt, on the other hand, will leave you nothing.
Land
Plots of land will be available on the marketplace, and the rarity will impact the dungeon spawn rate. The four rarities are – Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Legendary.
Every week, dungeons will spawn randomly on the world map. However, some land has a higher spawn rate. An entrance fee of $AURY needs to be paid to enter the dungeon, and a small percentage of this is given to the landowner.
Each dungeon’s location and difficulty level will reset approximately every eight days. Such a respawn rate ensures a healthy flow of gameplay throughout the week. There are five tiers of difficulty – Easy, Moderate, Hard, Legendary, and Heroic. Higher-tiered dungeons have a lower chance of spawning on lower-rarity land.
In Heroic dungeons, the rewards are higher than in other dungeons. However, there are chances of permanent loss in these dungeons. Upon defeat, a player must select a Neftie to leave behind alongside all its upgrades.
Aurory website
We compared Aurory’s’ desktop website to its mobile site to see how it measures up and if there were any changes they could make to the site to improve it. Follow along to see our verdict. In this test, we used a Samsung Galaxy S10+.
Desktop
Aurory’s website uses a theme where a new tab opens if you click its upper menu. If the user were to click into the “Game Dashboard” on the heading menu, they would be transferred to the second website featuring the dashboard, marketplace, incubator, and more.
By clicking on “Home,” the main site would appear. By clicking on “About Us” in the heading menu, the user can read more about the project’s team and advisors. The whitepaper, however, had several language options, which isn’t something that we see too often.
The first thing the user would see when entering the website is a short video and description of Aurory, along with an enticing “Play Game” button or “Keep in touch,” which would be for subscribing to the newsletter. The user will be redirected to the second website mentioned earlier by clicking on the “Play Game” button. The video was straight to the point and featured a lot of the in-game exploration options, such as Nefties and NFT cards, tactic games, and world roaming. The colors were vivid, the quality high, and the team managed to show off much of their game in just a few seconds. All in all, this was a very good first impression of the project.
Scrolling down more project information and a link to the project’s whitepaper could be found. In addition, there was information about the Aurorian NFTs, with more than 150,000 concurrent minters, making it one of the most anticipated NFT sales on the Solana blockchain.
Scrolling down the site, the user would pass beautifully colored original artwork, and all the colors fit well together, from the dark background to the colorful Nefties. Next was an option, framed in bright pink and purple, to join the community, featuring links to buy NFTs, buy Aurory, and follow the project on Twitter. In the end, the investors were featured, and the lower menu hyperlinked to Discord, Twitter, Medium, Telegram, Youtube, and Instagram.
Overall, the website was easy to navigate, and we enjoyed the generous share of artwork featured on the website. The video showed much of what the user can expect from the project, and the website gave sufficient information about NFTs and play-2-earn.
Mobile
When opening the website on mobile, the same video presents itself to the user. Due to the nature of the slimmer mobile screen, the video is somewhat cropped. However, it is still a very professionally executed front page. While the top menu has been minimized, the project’s logo was still easy to notice. Upon opening the upper menu, the user would have the same choices as when using a computer.
Although the slender layout caused some pictures to switch places, the site still looked well-made. However, we question the amount of text or perhaps the format of it. The text was nicely framed on the desktop version with artwork beside it, but this isn’t the case for the mobile. The text which explains the “Play-Catch-Earn” covers the entirety of the mobile screen. One could argue that, perhaps, it’s a little too much of much text size. While scrolling down, more artwork was shown off. The option to read the whitepaper is also presented nicely as a pink and purple button.
Upon moving further down the page, another area with text was presented. The text had been split into two regions, and a piece of art had been added in the middle. At the bottom of the website, the community aspect had been vertically placed on the mobile screen. The investors were also placed vertically, giving each investor a nice-sized logo to display. The bottom menu also looked really nice on mobile.
The Verdict
The computer version of the website was simple, with no special effects apart from the video at the start. The creators had done an excellent job implementing the artwork all over the website, giving the project a chance to show its originality. The site was easy to use and understand, which is a plus.
The mobile version also looked surprisingly good, especially the video. Due to the more slender frame of the mobile screen, we often see videos being cut off, text removed, or even artwork missing. For Aurory, however, they had done a really good job making sure to implement everything professionally.
The only constructive criticism we’ve got is maybe to space out the first text area. Although it looked nice on the computer, the text took up all the area on mobile. Apart from that, we enjoyed this website and all it had to offer.
Artwork
Through artwork, the team can set themselves and their project apart from others. Continuing in this report, let us look at Aurory’s artwork.
Aurory’s artwork could be described as heavily detailed while maintaining a clean look. The lines are uninterrupted, creating depth when needed without overshadowing the main visual. We are also able to see clear and vibrant colors.
As for the Kitty tavern, it could very well resemble a structure from some of the Studio Ghibli movies. We enjoy how Aurory has created a playful design and how well its artwork sets itself apart from other games in the GamFi realm. The characters in Aurory seem to have a Chibi-like art style. We like the blue and pink lights from the lanterns, which reminds us of some of the light effects from the Ori game series.
Concluding, we are delighted with Aurory’s artwork. To say we are curious as to how this will come into play would be an understatement. We are looking forward to seeing Aurory’s artwork shine through their game.
Blockchain
What Chain Does The Game Run On?
Aurory builds on top of Solana.
Solana is open-source, and the project implements a new, high-performance, permissionless blockchain. The entity maintaining the project is “The Solana Foundation,” based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Solana claims to be the fastest blockchain globally and the fastest-growing ecosystem in crypto. It has projects spanning DeFi, NFTs, Web3, and more.
Solana focuses on scaling for global adoption. The motto is “Integrate once and never worry about scaling again.” Due to this scaling, Solana can ensure transaction costs remain less than $0.01 for developers and users. The blockchain is also fast, with 400 millisecond block times. With hardware improvements, block times will also get faster as time goes on. Finally, Solana claims to be censorship-resistant, where the network will be open for applications to run freely, and transactions will never be stopped.
Solana manages to be this fast due to leveraging 40 years of distributed systems development, as we can see with centralized databases. Solana can leverage this because they found a way to share time without nodes relying upon one another. Solana’s blockchain protocol uses the concepts of a centralized database where it verifies the passing of time while keeping several decentralized attributes without conferring with a central clock. The consensus method is called Proof of History (PoH) and is what adds the element of time to the blockchain. PoH is designed to verify the time passing between transactions on the chain. When time is a factor, the blocks will be in chronological order, and none of this is dependent on centralized clocks or timestamps.
Solana accomplishes the verification of time by selecting a network node to be the leader. Being a leader node means that it adds entries to the ledger, also called a transaction validator. The leader is also the one who generates the sequence for Proof of History. Having this leader do all the sequencing of messages results in maximum efficiency and throughput. When the leader has made its sequence, it is sent to replicator nodes called validators. Validators are in charge of verification for the consensus algorithm.
To ensure decentralization and some equilibrium, leaders must rotate regularly. New leader nodes are chosen according to a leader schedule, which decides which validator gets to lead next, as there can only be one leader at any given time. The Proof of Stake elections chooses the leader schedule, encompassing the validator nodes. Proof of Stake (PoS) is a consensus algorithm with several flavors. We’ve talked about some of them in our reports on Tezos and Algorand. The PoS mechanism uses a Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) mechanism called Tower Consensus in Solana. Tower Consensus uses the PoH mechanism as a global source of time before consensus is achieved.
The video below explains Solana’s PoH concept in a simple way.
Our Thoughts On The Chain?
Solana is undoubtedly a fast and low-cost blockchain solution. For an in-game economy to function well, transactions must be immediate and essentially free for the players. What has generally been touted as one of Solana’s benefits over other blockchain solutions is the ability to handle up to 50,000 Transactions Per Second (TPS). However, one of Solana’s problems has been its several outages, counting at least nine since its mainnet launch in 2020.
Despite the outages from various congestion and spam events, the blockchain has not been compromised security-wise. Solana also gets a lot of flak from the general crypto community due to these outages.
A feather in Solana’s hat is the engaged NFT community. NFT sales and the number of transactions on Solana have continuously been at the forefront. From the picture below, we’ve gathered some statistics from Cryptoslam.io showing NFT sales volume over the past seven days.
Ethereum has been the clear leader the past week, with Solana coming in as a good second place. On the larger timeframes, it does look like NFT sales volume on Solana is decreasing. This might be due to the recent turmoil around the FTX collapse.
Screenshot from Cryptoslam.io 15.12.2022
Screenshot from Cryptoslam.io 15.12.2022
SyncSpace
Aurory has built a new feature called SyncSpace, which is a hybrid on-chain/off-chain inventory system. It’s meant to reduce friction for players by minimizing the number of blockchain interactions they will have to do. It uses Solana on the blockchain side and a proprietary program backend interacting with the chain. User items can then be synced, aka deposited in SyncSpace, or DeSynced, and exist in an external wallet.
Read more about it here.
Team
Who is on the team?
- Yann Penno – Executive Director, Art Director
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yann-penno-12b36923/- Creative Director (Dec 2017 – Present) at Pamplemousee Games
- Game Director (May 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Art Director (Oct 2010 – Present) at Minority Media Inc.
- Illustrator (Aug 2011-Aug 2020 ) at IsCool Entertainment
- Paul Vadillo – Head of Operations/Partnerships
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-vadillo-80587799/- Head of Operations (Apr 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Derivatives Trader (Apr 2017 – Jan 2021)
- Jonathan Campeau – Head of Production/Executive Producer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-campeau-7835b42/- Head of Production & Executive Producer (Sep 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Production Director & Production Manager (Oct 2018 – Jan 2022) at Ubisoft Montréal
- VR Producer (Mar 2017 – Oct 2018) at Minority Media Inc.
- Various Manager Positions (Jan 2010 – Mar 2017) at Ubisoft.
- Development Manager (Mar 2008 – Jan 2009) at EA Mobile
- Distribution Manager (Oct 2005 – Feb 2008) at Gameloft Canada
- Stephan Carmignani – Creative Director
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephancarmignani/- Creative Director (Feb 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Creative Director (Jul 2020 – Nov 2021) at Rovio Entertainment Corporation
- Creative Director – VR Arcade Games (Nov 2016 – Jul 2020) at Minority Media Inc.
- Level Design Director on the games Suicide Squad and Batman Arkham Origins (Jun 2011 – Nov 2016) at WB Games Montreal Inc.
- Level Design Director (Mar 2009 – Feb 2011) at Electronic Arts (EA)
- Level Designer on Rainbow6/Splinter Cell (May 2005 – Sep 2007) at Ubisoft
- Levani T. – Chief Blockchain Officer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tevdoradze/- Chief Blockchain Officer (Aug 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Machine learning & Computer vision researcher (Mar 2020 – Sep 2021) at Advertima
- Co-Founder (Mar 2019 – Aug 2021) at TipAndChat
- Software Engineer (Aug 2018 – Jan 2019) at The Good Drive
- Manish Ramioll – Art Director UI/UX
https://www.linkedin.com/in/manish-ramloll/- UX Director & Art Director (Nov 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- UX Consultant / Visual Designer / Motion Design (Sep 2021 – Present) Freelance
- UX Designer (Oct 2018 – Jun 2021) at Nurun
- Claire Mini – Assistant Art Director – Characters
- Claire Deberle – Lead Animator
https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-deberle-98a94520/- Senior 3D Animator – Concept Art (Oct 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Senior Character Animator (May 2020 – Oct 2021) at ON Animation Studio Montreal
- Character Animator (Oct 2018 – Feb 2020) at Reel FX
- Gameplay Animator (Jan 2017 – Sep 2018) at Ubisoft Montréal
- Felix-Antoine Dupéré – Associate Producer – Art
https://www.linkedin.com/in/felixantoinedupere/- Co-Founder / Producer / Game Designer / Programmer (Aug 2021 – Present) at Mooncube Games
- Associate Producer – Art (Nov 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Technical Artis (Mar 2021 – Feb 2022) at Behaviour Interactive
- VFX and Technical Artist (May 2019 – Apr 2021) at Spearhead Games
- Graphic Designer (Sep 2016 – Sep 2018) at Nurun
- Edwin Jang – Concept Artist
https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwin-jang-19131467/- Senior Concept Artist (Nov 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Concept Artist (Jul 2016 – Nov 2021) at Triotech Amusement Inc
- Senior Concept Artist (Mar 2021 – Sep 2021) at Singing Frog Studio
- Keith Ebanks – Lead Character Artist
https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-ebanks-36235a87/- Co-Founder – Art Director (Aug 2021 – Present) at Mooncube Games
- Lead 3D Character Artist (Sep 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Character Artist (Mar 2015 – Sep 2021) at Spearhead Games
- Store Manager (2001 – 2013) at EB Games (Game Stop)
- Gregory Paire – Senior UI/UX Artist
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gr%C3%A9gory-paire-0b819624/- UX/UI Graphic Designer (Feb 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Graphic Designer (Sep 2014 – Present) at Travaileur Autonome
- Graphic Web Integrator (2010 – Sep 2014) at Kõnige Communications
- Joseph Chataigner – UI/UX Artist
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-chataigner-48634a15a/- UX/UI Designer (May 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Strategic & Industrial Designer (Jan 2022 – Jun 2022)
- Industrial Designer (Sep 2021 – Dec 2021) at Studio Aristotelis Barakos
- Industrial Designer (Oct 2019 – Jan 2020) OCTOPUS Innovation
- Product & Industrial Designer (Jul 2018 – Sep 2018) at Gameloft
- Tigran Akopian – Senior Tech. Anim/Rigger
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tigran-akopian-4ab91a2/- Senior Tech Anim / Rigger (May 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Senior Tech Anim (Nov 2021 – May 2022) at Singularity 6
- Senior Rigger (Oct 2011 – May 2022) at Ubisoft
- Character Rigging and Skinning (Jan 2008 – Oct 2011) at Eidos Montreal
- Stephane Meury – Concept Artist
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephane-meury/- Concept Artist (Nov 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Illustrator & Concept Artist (Jan 2016 – Present) at Stephane Meury Illustration
- Instructor (Aug 2021 – Present) at NAD, School of Digital Arts
- Thomas Destugues – Senior Animator
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-destugues-55621511/- Senior Character Animator (Dec 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Lead Animator (Mar 2020 – Dec 2021) at Ludia
- Lead Animator (Jun 2018 – Jan 2020) at Game On
- Animator (Sep 2008 – Jun 2018) at Ubisoft
- Sarah Gehrig – Senior Animator
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-gehrig-86327a16/- Senior Character Animator (Jan 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- 3D Animator on Dead Space Remake (Mar 2021 – Jan 2022) at Motive Studio
- 3D Animator on Unannounced Project (Jun 2018 – Jan 2020) at Motive Studio
- Senior 3D & Gameplay Animator (Jan 2015 – Apr 2017) at Ubisoft
- 3D Animator on Assassins’s Creed and Far Cry 4 (Nov 2010 – Sep 2014) at Ubisoft
- Thomas Paice – Audio Director
- Raphaëlle Côté – Environment Art Director
- Alexandre Gendron – Music Composer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandre-gendron-bb15b0179/- Co-Founder, CFO and Audio Director (Aug 2021 – Present) at Mooncube Games
- Music Composer (Nov 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Composer / Sound Designer (Jul 2015 – Present) at Alexandre Gendron Musique
- Simon Lallement – Environment Artist
https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-lallement/- Lead Artist (Jun 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Senior Character Artist (Nov 2018 – Jun 2022) at Ubisoft Montréal
- Senior Character Artist (Oct 2017 – Feb 2018) at LuckyHammers
- Lead 3D Character Artist (Jun 2012 – Oct 2017) at Gameloft
- Cedric Segales – Senior VFX Artist
https://www.linkedin.com/in/c%C3%A9dric-segales-a7572236/- VFX Artist / Tech Art (Feb 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Senior VFX Artist (May 2018 – Feb 2022) at Eidos-Montréal
- Senior VFX Artist (Oct 2012 – May 2018) at Ludia
- Maxime Vigneault – 3D Modeler
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxime-vigneault-08a14920/- 3D Artist (Dec 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- 3D Modeller (Mar 2016 – Dec 2021) at Ubisoft
- Computer Technician (Jul 2013 – Mar 2016) at Ciot
- Bastien Lerivray – Senior VFX Artist
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bastien-lerivray-aab4a8b/- Senior Tech Art / VFX (May 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Senior VFX Artist (Aug 2015 – May 2022) at Eidos-Montréal
- VFX Artist (Dec 2011 – Aug 2015) at Gameloft
- Jean-Sebastien Pepin – 3D Modeler
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jean-sebastien-pepin-ba1a80a6/- 3D Artist (Nov 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Props Artist (Aug 2019 – Nov 2021) at Gameloft
- 3D Modeler (Feb 2016 – Jul 2019) at LuckyHammers
- Dylan Howell – 3D Modeler
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-howell-25a773218/- 3D Character Artist (Feb 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Maxime Ciccotti – Lead Game Designer
- Nicolas Vidil – Lead Unity Engineer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-vidil-6b259b9/- Senior Software Engineer (Jan 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Engineering Manager (Mar 2020 – Jan 2022) at Unity Technologies
- AI Programmer (Jul 2013 – Mar 2020) at Ubisoft Montéal
- AI / Gameplay Programmer (Nov 2008 – Jun 2013) at Ubisoft Montpellier
- Troy Toutikian – Level Artist
- Adel El Ghazi – Game & Economy Designer
- Julien Prince – Level Designer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/julien-prince-4a64283a/- Senior Level Designer / Game Designer (Dev 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Senior Level Designer (Oct 2012 – Dec 2021) at WB Games Montreal Inc.
- Level Designer (Jun 2008 – Nov 2012) at Ubisoft
- Yann Martinez – 3D Modeler
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yann-martinez-18264614a/- 3D Artist (Feb 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Sacha Persat – Technical Game Designer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sacha-persat-5b427a5/- Game Designer / Lead Gameplay Programmer (May 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Game Designer (Jul 2021 – Jan 2022) at Meta4 Interactive
- Minh-Mily Nguyen – Level Artist / Level Designer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/minhmilynguyen/- Level Artist (Oct 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- 3D Environment Artist (Nov 2016 – May 2022) at Spearhead Games
- Jonathan Tang – Technical Director – Services
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-tang/- Technical Director (Feb 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Senior Engineering Manager (Jan 2021 – Feb 2022) at BFA Industries
- Software Engineer (May 2018 – Jan 2021) at IPSY
- Julien Pellet – Technical Director – Infra
https://www.linkedin.com/in/julienpellet/- Technical Director (Apr 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Site Reliability Exorcist & Technical Director (Jan 2015 – Apr 2022) at Ubisoft
- Senior Architect (Jan 2014 – Dec 2014) at Hurence
- Mitchel Kelonye – Lead Front End Engineer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelonye/- Frontend Lead (Nov 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Senior Frontend Engineer (Feb 2021 – Nov 2021) at Synthetix
- Frontend Lead (Mar 2017 – Feb 2021) at Toggl Plan
- Technical Director (Mar 2016 – Dev 2020) at KDRM
- Jerome Barnoin – Senior Backend Engineer
- Vincent Paquette – Senior Gameplay Engineer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-paquette-18b31030/- Software Engineer (Mar 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Founder (Mar 2013 – Present) at No Batteries Games
- Programmer Team Lead (Sep 2017 – Mar 2022) at Behaviour Interactive
- Game Programmer (Jul 2015 – Aug 2017) at Hibernum Creations
- Game Developer (Jul 2012 – Jun 2015) at Roofdog Games
- Bugra S. – Front End Engineer
- Frantz Kati – Front End Engineer
- Binfeng Ke – Dev QA
- Grégoire Gicquel – Gameplay and Unity Engineer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gr%C3%A9goire-gicquel-898114125/- Developer (Jan 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Lead Developer (Sep 2021 – Present) at Oneiric Tales
- Programmer (Feb 2020 – Aug 2021) at Spiders
- Marvin Polette – Gameplay Engineer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marvin-polette-a6341590/- Founder & Technical / Creative Director (Dec 2020 – Present) at Oneiric Tales
- Gameplay Programmer (Sep 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- Unity Developer (Dec 2018 – Dec 2020) at The Good Drive
- Baptiste Lloret – UI Programmer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/baptiste-lloret-31492b187/- Developer (Feb 2021 – Present) at Oneiric Tales
- UI Developer (Mar 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Unity Developer (Sep 2019 – Jan 2020) at The Good Drive
- Frederic Portaria-Janicki – Senior Infrastructure Engineer / Senior Software Engineer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fjanicki/- Senior Infrastructure Engineer (Jun 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Software Engineer (Jul 2020 – Jun 2022) at SSENSE
- Senior Software Engineer (Jan 2017 – Jul 2020) at OpenFleet
- Tylo Aurory – Blockchain Engineer
- Wendell Aurory – Senior Backend Engineer
- Patricio Rodriguez – Backend Engineer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricio-rodriguez-975a41163/- Backend Engineer (Apr 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- DevOps Engineer (Apr 2019 – Apr 2022) at Mercado Libre
- Software Engineer (Apr 2018 – Apr 2019) at UNIDIGITAL
- Matt Aurory – Marketing and Operations
- Michael Natoli – Marketing and Operations
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-natoli-6a8b2111b/- Operations (Jan 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Property Manager (Jul 2019 – Jan 2022) at Big Mick Entertainment
- Owner (May 2016 – Mar 2020) at Digital Dr. Marketing
- Timothé Gindrey – Marketing and Operations
https://www.linkedin.com/in/timoth%C3%A9-gindrey/- Community Manager (May 2021 – Present) at Aurory
- James Dean – SFX Audio
- Javier Moreno Garcia – Senior Backend Engineer
- Maryse Duckett – Senior 3D Artist / Level Designer
- Nick Ciesinski – Product Manager Web3
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-ciesinski-47b85825/- Product Manager (Aug 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Consultant (Mar 2016 – Present) at Double Diamond Associates
- Product Manager (Jun 2021 – Jul 2022) at GreenPark Sports
- Yat-Chi Lau – Product Manager Gameplay
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnyclau/- Product Manager (Aug 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Product Manager (Apr 2019 – Aug 2022) at Unity
- Project Manager (Apr 2014 – Dec 2018) at Ubisoft Montréal
- Game Designer (Jun 2010 – Mar 2014) at Ubisoft
- Game Designer (2008 – Jun 2010) at Ubisoft Shanghai
- Game Designer (2007 – Dec 2008) at Ubisoft
- Timothé Courtier – Freelance Game Designer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothe-courtier/- Game Designer (Oct 2022 – Present) at Aurory
- Game Designer & Tester (Sep 2021 – Aug 2022) at Ubisoft
Team Assessment
Aurory has a strong team with a combined relevant experience of over three centuries. Having over 65 dedicated people, where several come from titans like Ubisoft, EA, Gameloft, Eidos, and Warner. Most of the team is identifiable through LinkedIn. The team is mostly based in Canada’s Montreal region.
Do They Have Relevant Experience?
A lot of the team members have previously worked in similar roles as they do with Aurory now. A majority of the team members come from different game studios in the Montréal area and have been a part of the game development scene there.
Their executive director, Yann Penno, has previously led multiple indie studios, and Jonathan Campeau, the executive producer, has decades of experience from EA and Ubisoft, partaking in the development of titles like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Far Cry 4. Digging into the other team members, we find the same track record of years of experience, so we’re not particularly concerned about the team’s ability to perform.
Who Are Their Backers?
Aurory has partnered up with some well-known names in the space. We will be looking into a couple of them in this part of the report. The investors can be found on Aurory’s website.
Animoca Brands
Here, we can discover Animoca Brands, a leader in digital entertainment, blockchain, and gamification. In this written moment, they have invested in over 340 projects, including some well-known names such as OpenSea, Axie Infinity, and Alien worlds. Animoca Brands strives to deliver property rights to the World’s gamers and create a more equitable framework that contributes to building the open metaverse.
Read more about Animoca Brands here: https://www.animocabrands.com/.
Ascensive Assets
Ascensive Assets is a firm that invests in seed-staged blockchain companies across web3. They were founded in October 2019. The firm has experience in crypto dating back to 2016, and two of the founding partners have been playing high-stakes poker for 8 and 10 years. Their website states that Ben Middleton, founding partner, applies his in-depth knowledge of game theory and risk management at the poker table to cryptocurrency trading. Alex Miningham, the general partner, has been an active investor in crypto since 2017. He was also a recipient of Business Observer’s 40 under 40 award.
Read more about Ascensive Assets here: https://ascensiveassets.com/.
Zee Prime Capital
Zee Prime Capital is a “totally super cool and chilled” venture capital firm. They invest in web3 projects, were founded in February 2019, and are based in Bratislava, Slovakia.
Read more about the firm here: https://zeeprime.capital/.
Roadmap
Game Developer’s Roadmap
Although Aurory hasn’t shared an official roadmap on their website or whitepaper, we found a recent update from the 20th of October, 2022. This gives an idea of what the team has been up to and at what pace they work. Since April 2021, the team has managed to share their lite-and-whitepaper, create Aurory tactics early access, and a leaderboard.
Alpha Teams Thoughts On The Roadmap
Although the roadmap isn’t officially promoted on their website or whitepaper, we found a lot of information on the substack. Aurory has been posting monthly updates since March of 2022 and explains in detail the progress made since their previous post. We’ve seen similar monthly updates for other games we’ve researched, such as Domi Online.
Even though their roadmap isn’t as traditional as we’ve seen previously, the monthly updates show us how devoted their team is to accomplishing the official launch of the game and whatever comes after that for Aurory.
Whitepaper
Alpha Team’s General Thoughts On The Whitepaper
Aurory’s whitepaper is a PDF file of 51 pages total. It starts with a quick introduction to what Aurory is before diving into the lore. Following the introduction of the main characters, Max and Helios, from the lore, the whitepaper goes on to give a game overview. Here we get to explore the features of the game and in which ways it can be played and cater to different gamers through both PvE and PvP.
Explaining in detail how the various mechanisms like the quest-loops, combat, landmarks, and how the game assets play into it all is much appreciated. There is also an emphasis on how the community-owned DAOry treasury is set up, given it is one of the largest treasuries in the Solana ecosystem.
The NFTs and marketplace are well described in both form and function, which is good to keep in mind when continuing to the economic part of the whitepaper. The economy spans 12 pages in the whitepaper, which explains how it all ties together and how the game can cater to free-to-play and invested players. With a focus on long-term engagement, the economy is built to be as sustainable as possible, and with the seasonal content updates, the goal is to keep players in it for the long haul.
It is a nice whitepaper that is easy to follow and with an art style just like the game. We wish there would have been some more information regarding the team in the whitepaper specifically, as well as details about the tech stack. With the game demo readily available in the browser, we find it to be built with the Unity game engine, enabling WebGL. We think elaborating on this would be a great addition to the whitepaper. We would also like to see some updates to the whitepaper in general, as it was last updated on 21 February 2022.
Growth Implications
There are no apparent implications for growth that we can see. The Solana blockchain should be able to handle a high volume of transactions, with the “multiplayer” parts of the game being instanced in which only a small amount of players would meet together at the same time at the “intersections” of the Tokané fragments, as well as in an instanced PvP fight battle arena, there wouldn’t be a lot of difficulties server-side to facilitate them all.
In our opinion, the community is also strong, so the marketing or player base wouldn’t be an immediate problem.
With a strong team with tons of experience, we don’t see the team as an inhibitor to growth either.
Socialnomics
Social Media Followers Count
| Platform | Follower Count |
|---|---|
| Discord | 30,914 |
| 196,854 | |
| Youtube | 3,130 |
| 9,673 | |
| Telegram | 12,235 |
| 92 |
The socialnomics gives a better understanding of the community. It also shows how well the project communicates through the various platforms. Without further ado, let’s look at Aurory’s socialnomics starting with Discord.
Aurory’s Discord server has several chat rooms, including “announcements,” “Sneak-peeks,” “Patch-notes,” a variety of sale-buy and trade channels for each purpose, and a “General chat.” They also have a creative area where artwork, needlework, and videos are shared by and to the community.
As expected, the general chat is quite active for a project with over 30,000 members. If the members have questions or worries about scams, the Aurory team’s CM, Tim, is quick to assess the situation. AMA’s are also announced in various chats on the server. Every two weeks, sometimes a month, the team will notify their Patch notes in a disclosed server. The patch notes are detailed and have a clear structure, making it easy for any member to read through and get an idea of the project’s progress. We love the team’s openness and how they lay out proof that they are and keep working for this game to reach its’ full potential. The team also seems very passionate about their project, which is fantastic.
These beautiful pieces of art were created by one of the admins, and a part of the creative
team, Splénétix.
The project has the most followers on Twitter, which is very typical. Typical posts from the profile are short trailers, patch updates, artwork, and overall progress. They generously share landscape images of the different in-game areas. Whenever they are at an event, this is also shared on their Twitter for anyone wanting to say hi. Judging by the latest tweet trends by the project, a follower can expect to see two-to-five tweets a week, in addition to retweets.
Now we will have a look at the project’s engagement rate. We hope to see over 1% of their followers interact per post. Usually, from what we can see, they get between 214-516 interactions on their tweets which is 0.01-0.025% of their follower base. However, they have had big tweets, some getting up to 27,357, which equals 13.5%. The videos posted have gained a stunning 48,800 views and regularly reach a high number of views. So it’s evident that although not all their followers follow them daily, many are very excited to see the big announcements and progress that the team makes.
Another interesting Twitter source is the @AuroryDaily news channel, which brings you daily updates on the game, sharing alpha from the project’s Discord.
Aurory’s YouTube channel has approximately 3,130 subscribers and has till now gained a total of 109,575 views with its seven videos. On this channel, subscribers can expect to see teasers, trailers, and small clips showing in-game missions. However, Aurory has teamed up with RafiKey, introducing Aurory Gaming.
This channel features gameplay, first impressions, explaining tactics and archetypes, and he even explains some in-depth details from the whitepaper. Although we imagine that the community would appreciate this sort of video style, we think the channel is somewhat hidden. Although the official Twitter tweet about it, it can’t be found through the original youtube channel. We think adding a link or even a playlist of RafiKey on the main youtube channel would be a good idea.
The project has 50 posts on Instagram, dating back to the 1st of August 2021. At this written moment, their last post was 4th of January. They post short videos and artwork on Instagram, and their followers seemingly enjoy the updates. It also seems like they repost most of their Instagram posts on Facebook without much more administration on the platforms.
In addition to these platforms, Aurory also has Medium and Substack. Remember that the number of followers can change relatively fast, and these numbers will likely only be accurate for a short time.
Speculations And Connecting The Dots
There are many interesting things about Aurory. However, we’re curious how the Axie-like 3v3 battle game will hold up in the long run.
There are some clear parallels between Aurory and Illuvium in the way that you’re exploring an “overworld” catching monsters to fight within the battle module. However, Illuvium went for the auto chess style combat, whereas Aurory does the Axie-like 3v3 combat. There isn’t necessarily a right or wrong way to do it, but we’re curious how the Axie-like 3v3 battle will hold up in the long run.
With sufficient strategic depth and a level playing field, there might not be an issue at all, but is this a game mode that will attract mainstream gamers?
Aurory has the potential to enthrall a lot of players if they manage to tell their story right in the adventure module. With many games being quite hollow in the lore department, it seems Aurory is primarily here to tell the story of Max and Helios.
Making a browser-based game with WebGL is a decision that will enable far more players to access the game compared to desktop-based clients. We’re not saying it will attract many players by being a browser game in itself, but it leverages a platform with lower system requirements than a game like Illuvium.
Having one of the largest treasuries in the Solana ecosystem, it will be interesting to see how the DAOry will govern and impact the project forward.
With the very experienced and competent team that Aurory boasts, we wonder whether Aurory has some aces up its sleeve, which could be announced in the coming months. It would be especially interesting if we saw new iterations of the battle mode. There is a clear sentiment that Aurory’s adventure mode will be the big make-or-break update once it gets added to the game; we have high hopes for it.
Conclusion
Aurory’s turn-based JPRG has a story to uncover and tactical fights to be fought. The PvE part of the main story functions much like an Axie-like 3×3, so we are interested to see how this will play out and be received by the future players of Aurory. In contrast to the rest of the game, being more open-world-like, we do wonder if a tactical fights solution is the best one for Aurory – we are curious to see if we will see any innovative solutions in the future.
When it comes to the artwork of Aurory, honestly, it might be worth trying the game for that single reason. We love the playful and cozy style and the detailed elements ranging from the characters themselves to the structures and map designs.
The team consists of over 65 dedicated members with relevant experiences and backgrounds from Ubisoft, EA, and Gameloft, to name a few. With most of the players already having experiences from previous game developments, we are positive for Aurory reaching its launch date. When, however, is still a mystery to uncover.
Register Now! Register for Token Sale
Balthazar is launching it’s token to the public very soon! Join our waitlist for exclusive benefits and instructions on how to participate!
Connect with our community.