GM Gotchigang! As the Year of the Gotchi enters its final quarter, the pace of development at GotchiHQ is reaching its most frenetic level yet.

In today's update, we're excited to cover:

• New Gotchi Guardians towers, upgrades, and game mechanics
• Gotchiverse Aarena NPC Lickquidators, special items and game balancing
• The Game Center launching on Aavegotchi’s dapp
• Distribution confirmed on Gameswift platform
• Major success at Chainlink’s SmartCon Pregame event
• AavegotchiDAO actively supporting games with The Sandbox, Gotchi Crawlers, and moar!

So let's get into it!

🎮 GAMING 🎮

Gotchi Guardians

Thanks to a herculean effort by Game Director Jason Slama and his team, we were able to demo a basic version of Gotchi Guardians at SmartCon, and the feedback was excellent.

"It's so beautiful", "It looks like Zelda", and "I don't usually tower defense games, but this is surprisingly addictive," were just some of the comments we received on the floor.

All of this great feedback was thanks to the pixel-perfect visuals Slama and his burgeoning team have been implementing, including map, towers, enemies, and new animations.

In terms of gameplay, the main focus has been adding more mechanics and polishing existing ones.

Some mechanics added during this sprint were:

• Selling: Switch up your strategy by selling towers or Lickquidators and earn 75% of your gold back.
• Match upgrades: These are special upgrades that affect all players in the game equally. Initially only limited to upgrading the Bridge, match upgrades have now been expanded to include Dire Tire (explosions upon death) and Funguy
• Lickquidator effects: In this sprint, we introduced the Licker, a powerful Level 2 Lickquidator that can attack Aavegotchis and towers. Successful hits stun the opponent for a few seconds, which can be devastating for an unprepared Aavegotchi. Beware the Licker!

In addition to implementing gameplay, the Guardians team has also begun expanding on the lobby and matchmaking to prepare for a community-wide playtest in November.

Gotchigang, we're eager to get this game into your hands and do a proper community stress test!

And speaking of playtests...

Gotchiverse Aarena

The Aarena just had its first playtest (alongside Gotchi Guardians) at Chainlink’s SmartCon conference in Barcelona. The game was well received, so Pixelcraft will be doubling down on our instinct to deliver The Aarena as not only a popular battlezone within Gotchiverse 3D but also as its own standalone title. Look forward to more on that in the near future!

We are also excited to announce that the Aarena is approaching a state of readiness to allow for a community-wide playtest.

This announcement is coming soon, so make sure you're subscribed to The Curve or following us in Discord so you don't miss it!

In terms of development, Gotchiverse Aarena has also made the jump to lightspeed: all combat is balanced with players able to fight each other with both ranged and melee weapons, block incoming attacks, and throw items.

Lickquidators now freely roam the map, engage, or hunt you down if you try to hide. Wreck them and they only return stronger and in moar numbers! Look how scared these gotchis look!

To give you a fighting chance, you can glug down any Health or Ability Potions you crafted, and crack open Special Weapon Blocks that contain a bespoke item based on where your position is in the game currently. Here’s how the post-match summary of those positions would look:

We’ve had many matches now with 10 players successfully facing off and being able to jump in with some pre-defined Gotchi archetypes.

Check out this video of one of our recent playtests…

October is all about ‘polish’… adding SFX and VFX, hooking up Wallets, more work on translating everyone’s wearables to 3D, and finishing work on the aesthetics of the battle map. The map, inspired by legendary Aavegotchi locations such as the Defi Desert, Laughing Peaks, and the bioluminescent Daark Forest, aims to deliver on the scene first shown in the original cinematic trailer. 

And speaking of the trailer...

Gotchiverse 3D

Andy Tudor's The Aarena and Gotchiverse 3D experiences enhance one another and, while priority has gone to developing The Aarena first, we also have locked in an iterative release strategy for Gotchiverse 3D. 

The first major release (aiming to be live by Christmas) will be a social Gotchiverse testing ground open during future Aavegotchi Discord’s weekly Hangouts (every Saturday 2pm UTC / 10am EST); all the more reason to join our Discord!

The second major release will focus on the core farming elements that are currently only live on the 2D Phaser build (start farming Alchemica there right now!)

Finally, the third release delivers our full vision with an emphasis on social and questing elements. 

This overview barely scratches the surface, so look out for more announcements on Gotchiverse roadmap coming soon!

AAVEGOTCHI DAO

The Sandbox Aavegotchi Experience

Our most ambitious DAO sponsored collaboration to date! Look forward to hours of adventuring in a gorgeous interpretation of the Gotchiverse, built by our community’s very own Gotchi French Army. 

The launch date for The Sandbox’s Aavegotchi Experience was originally set for October 25, but due to scheduling conflicts on The Sandbox side, it will likely be delayed until November 8th.

And as we publish this, the Sandbox team has already begun the process of releasing the entire Aavegotchi NFT collection as native Sandbox assets!

Simply log into the Sandbox app with your Aavegotchi-connected wallet to unlock the Sandbox version of your Aavegotchis! In true cross-metaverse fashion, selling/transferring your Aavegotchi also transfers the Sandbox avatar.

There are some mega $SAND and $GHST rewards waiting for players as well. Read the full announcement for more details!

Gotchi Crawler

Development on Oliver Spoon’s Gotchi Crawler continues at a rapid pace. Co-op mode was recently demonstrated with the help of Gotchigang veteran Moongotchi! 

https://twitter.com/theoliverspoon/status/1705980244493017552

Spoon continues to demonstrate his elite pixel art skills with thoughtful characters that are being revealed to populate the dungeon crawler. Including this extra large rendition of a rare blue Rofl!

Orium Network NFT rental protocol

Orium Network has succeeded in getting support from the DAO to build out its proposed rental protocol for Aavegotchi NFTs. Over the coming months, they will work closely with the DAO to deliver a more scalable and streamlined experience via their upcoming Marketplace. The original proposal and DAO discussion can be seen in full here. We look forward to all the potential Orium is about to unlock!

👻 AAVEGOTCHI DAPP 👻

The Game Center launched at Aavegotchi.com in September, paving the way for the dapp’s evolution into a full blown gaming platform. Currently two games are listed as live and many more are showcased as upcoming.

Planned features include cross-game player profiles, the ability to bookmark favorite games, and integration with Gotchichain, Aavegotchi’s upcoming dedicated gaming blockchain.

🙌 PARTNERSHIPS 🙌

Chainlink’s SmartCon and Pregame

Aavegotchi made a BIG splash at Chainlink’s annual conference, SmartCon. In a sign of the times, this year kicked off with PreGgame, a Web3 gaming dedicated event, and Aavegotchi showed up in force. 16 computers ran hot all night with seats filled for Gotchi Guardians and the Gotchiverse Arena. 700+ attendees had the opportunity to go hands-on with our latest builds in this first ever public showing of both games. 

The feedback was exactly what we hoped for with players coming back time and again to compete in the multiplayer competition. This was a great first test for Pixelcraft’s games and, based on the results, we are more certain than ever that we are building exactly what we set out to: compelling, original games that are accessible to all gamers. Onward!

Gameswift

Gameswift has a playerbase of over 40,000 today and is growing fast. They are also fans of Aavegotchi and understand what we are building. That’s why we were thrilled to announce distribution for our games is already confirmed for the Gameswift platform. 

Gameswift will be supporting both Gotchi Guardians and Gotchiverse Aarena upon their respective launches, introducing our games to their highly engaged community. 

https://twitter.com/GameSwift_io/status/1706307610280894797

In Conclusion

That about sums up this September with Aavegotchi. We hope you find the progress made as exciting as our team here at Pixelcraft Studios do. 

October is now upon us and it always seems to be a great month for our ghostly frens  – so subscribe to The Curve (our official newsletter and blog) to get email updates directly into your inbox!

If you want to get more interactive, join our Discord where you can attend our weekly Saturday Hangouts to get the very latest alpha directly from the source. In fact, the biggest Hangout of the year is our annual Haalloween Party, slated for Saturday, October 28. You won’t want to miss it!

Stay aavesome frens!

The Aavegotchi Team