Splinderlands had not made any major changes to it’s gameplay visuals and user look & feel for over 6 years, but if you have played the game recently you surely would have noticed that Splintelrands has started to revamp all aspects of user interface and visuals.
Overall it is looking really professional and stunning. Honestly speaking I have not played any other NFT based game with this quality of visuals.
The landing page still looks similar giving you a snapshot of which league you are currently playing in and how far you are from advancing to the next League.
The real visual magic starts once you hit the “Battle” button. Earlier you will see a random trivia related to the lore linked to a monster. This has now been replaced a set of animated screens that you admire while you get matched to an opponent in your league. This can be a couple of seconds or might take upto 10-12 seconds.
Once you have been paired with a comparable opponent you will have exactly 3 minutes to set you team as per the battle conditions. These 3 minutes need to be used for quickly reviewing your opponents battle history to see what combinations of summoners and cards he generally uses so you can plan your counter actions accordingly.
Then you select the best possible cards as per the mana limit of the battle and the other battle conditions in place.
One improvement I see here is the easier and more intuitive interface to select the summoner and cards, easily move them forward or back and the “remove” option which was not there earlier.
Why is Splinterlands Making so Many Updates?
There are a lot of new features upgrades in the pipeline of Splinterlands including a new gameplay, new Set of cards Arcana, Land expansion 2.0 and this is being backed by active marketing initiatives. I am convinced that this is going to lead to a major rush of new players into the game and boost all formats of the game ecosystem.
This may get further accelerated as the overall crypto market bull run gains momentum and more and more users want to get exposure to Web3 gaming.
Will the New Players Stick to Splinetrlands?
Next comes the big question that is whether al these new players coming in will stick around for the long run or not.
I personally thing a big chunk of the players will stick around which is driven by several factors:
1. Proven & Tested Project- Many new entrants to the crypto space quickly get disillusioned with the pump and dump projects which either get rugged or are not able to withstand the challenges of a prolonged bearish phase. Splinterlands has thrived during the many bearish phases it has faced over the last 6 years.
2. Small Player Friendly- Many blockchain games are whale centric that need a lot of investment to play effectively and you need to regularly keep investing. Splinterlands just needs $10 to get started and you can level up your game at the rate you want and you can keep playing even if you don’t have a lot of capital available to buy a lot of NFT cards.
3. Active and Passive Options- Some players might play for hours every day while some might choose to play on and off. Everyone will have phases where they play regularly but for a while disconnect due to IRL work or some other constraints. In Splinterlands you keep earning multiple rewards for playing regularly and if for any reason you are not going to play actively for some time you have the option to rent out your cards for that duration.
If you would like to enter the magical realm of Splinterlands you can get started here- https://splinterlands.com/register?ref=sambtc
Cheers,
Sam