Bright Star Studios, the team behind the blockchain game Ember Sword has divulged some extensive information about what players can expect from their economy in a new blog post. The information was released alongside the news that the team is launching their token, $Ember on June 13th.
Ember Sword has reached a new milestone in their development. With the release of their crypto-token $Ember, the team will follow through on their promise to fans of the game who purchased badges nearly two years ago. The badges will grant players some of the $Ember currency, depending on the level of badge they purchased, with the highest tier, platinum, going for tens of thousands of dollars, and granting players 250,000 tokens upon its release.
The token release is just the next step on the road to release for Ember Sword, and alongside the notion of the token drop, Bright Star clarified what they’ll be used for in their blog, with a differentiation between the on-chain and off-chain economy. The Ethereum-based ERC-20 token will follow a similar path of many other blockchain-based games, where the token is required to not only mint NFTs, but to purchase them as well.
The on-chain economy will revolve around using $Ember to create the cosmetic-only NFT’s, but landowners, players who have bought plots of land, can earn $Ember rewards by hosting events and shops on their land. Meanwhile, free players who do not wish to take part in the on-chain economy may still earn rare cosmetics through regular gameplay that they can choose to keep or sell – however players will need to connect a crypto wallet like Metamask to get these rare cosmetics.
Bright Star has also stated that Early Access will be released later this year but from what we can glean from the post it will be severely limited in its scope compared to launch. Players won’t be able to cultivate their land, create quests or make any of the planned premium appearance changes. In 2025, Bright Star plans to expand on the content, but they won’t release any of the new nations outside of Solarwood until 2026.
While there was some mention of the type of content Early Access will have in store for players, the post was light on how the specific gameplay systems will benefit from the on-chain economy. Currently, the running theory is that earning $Ember will spur landowners to generate exciting events and build largescale player hubs. Functional weapons, wearables, resources and in-game gold are only available only by playing, shirking the potential for players to pay-to-win, but we have yet to see a broader spectrum of how the on and off chain economy will function to enhance a meaningful relationship to players in-game. Still, the token release is a milestone worth celebrating, and we look forward to seeing how Ember Sword has matured when it hits Early Access later this year.
