A post going over some of the delays regarding holozing and a rundown on what's to come.
We've ran into some issues with the vial opening, I guess similar to the main game, things have been made quite complicated which takes some time to make sure they're working as intended. Unfortunately, it has taken a lot longer than expected. We are hopeful to have a working vial opening ready soon an announce it over on the official 
I've been trying to work on different things in the meantime, we've been doing quite well with our digital collection card set and are looking forward to announcing to the artists all the artwork we've chosen to include in it so far. There's still some work to be done there as well, which I've been told our game dev can handle to make the opening a lot smoother compared to the mess we did with the vial opening that required a lot of bandaids and will kind of be McGyvered to a release soon.
Gameplay is also very far and quite complex under the hood but easy enough to learn how to play for newcomers and casuals, sort of like Hive itself I suppose. We've done a lot of work there while other things have kind of staggered behind but this also means that we're back in debt in terms of devpay which the price of Hive has made it difficult. I'm quite happy that our devs have stuck with us however and agreed to delayed payment understanding the situation and the uniqueness of the project.
Due to funding we've had to place a break on 3d work and further 2d artwork such as new creatures with the exception of card designs for professions/crafting. As many of you know we've placed a lot of resources on the artwork so it is something that can stand the test of time, we are very proud of the work done there for a grassroots project. We've been very lucky to find amazing artists working for reasonable prices and many (even communities outside of Hive) have mentioned how amazing everything art related to our project is.
Anyway, here's a quick rundown of the process we're expecting the game to develop in the near future.
Release vial opening
Adjust zing collection rewards to start sliding toward item and creature holdings slowly over time based on opened vials. I.e. if 20% have been opened we will balance collection zing rewards to go 20% to items and creatures with 80% still going towards unopened vials with a potential extra 10% going towards items and creatures.
Players receive a "collection weight" based on rarity of creature's stats and items, those with rarer items earn more collection rewards. This will mostly be based on odds chance, for instance, if getting an item that's holo rarity is 10% chance compared to an item that's epic rarity with 90% chance, the account with the holo one will get 90% of the collection rewards while the other gets 10%.
We've also recently done a lot of work with tieing backend/hive-engine to the game and vice versa, i.e. when a creature is opened from a vial it turns into an nft on hive-engine and the game receives that information, similar when a creature is captured in-game it turns into an nft and the website+backend updates.
Open marketplace
After vial opening is live we will start allowing players to trade unopened vials and creatures + items on the marketplace. The marketplace will have a low fee of 3% with half going to the team for further development and the other half of the fee burning zing. This will be our first official sink and our first official burning of zing tokens after buybacks with the fees if players traded with hive rather than zing.
Open Alpha testing
While for a short time there will be a private alpha testing to check for general bugs and balancing healers and creatures, we will then open alpha testing to the public to whoever has purchased a vial and opened it. While our healer minting is delayed, everything in alpha will be temporary such as battle history, experience gains and items or creatures generated, this means we'll randomly assign a healer for accounts with at least a starter creature from the alpha vial.
Preparing for beta
Depending on how long the above take, we may give players a kickstart in starting their recorded and immutable journey in Holozing before other plans are finished and implemented such as professions. Players may still earn ingame items related to professions such as Holo Dust but won't be able to spend them on crafting until professions and healer minting goes live.
Things that may be implemented before beta or after beta depending on progress
Healer minting
We've done a lot of work on healer minting early on in our project, it has been on pause due to lack of funding and our healer artist having to work on other things in the meantime. There's still a few things to fine-tune and add there in terms of different healer properties we wanna include in the mix and to make sure healer generation works well.
Collection Set
Our collection set will also launch eventually with amazing artwork from many different artists here on Hive. This will be quite a unique side-project for the game and collectors, allowing them to open up packs of cards with different rarities in terms of stats, border design colors and border designs (alpha + craft). Some nice additional surprises there to be announced later, the plan for the Alpha Collection Set packs is to also be sold not only in Hive/hbd but potentially fully in zing and/or give discount if zing is used. Artists will also be compensated for their artworks inclusion with an agreed upon fee along with royalty fees based on sales in the currency of their choosing. A portion of the sales may also work as a sink of zing depending on how we're doing funding-wise by then.
PvE challenges
After daily creature encounters and PvP has been live and working for a while, we will also start introducing different PvE challenges for every healer. These may have a Zing entry cost and introduce the healer to different challenges where they have to beat a number of creatures of different stats and attempt to get through them all without being able to replenish mana through potions/breaks. There'll be different brackets here based on the rarity of your healer's items and creature's stats and potential difficulties and randomness of which creatures you'll face to win a prize hopefully worth more than the entry fee!
Future Plans
Naturally with the way the game is set up, when funding allows, there's plans to generate a world where players can roam free, explore, quest, gather, capture, and battle each other while chatting hive username to hive username.
Ending words
I have to admit this has been a lot harder than anticipated, not only in terms of skill/endurance but also on the mental side of things. While I've tried to fund the game as much as I can, there's unfortunately a bottom line there for me personally as well where I have to look towards growing my Hive stake rather than locking up more Hive towards the game at these Hive prices. I won't be able to purchase as many vials as I've done for a while but am thankful for others who've also believed in the project and assisted the crowdfunding of it and I hope with some progress we can show there'll be more support for the game and excitement returning for playing it. I guess I don't need to say too much regarding that as we all are aware of Hive's performance lately, but as they say, it's darkest before the dawn.
With that I do want to note that I haven't "lost hope" or that I'm not willing to continue betting and working towards the game, far from that. I am however also a "hive maxi" and have long term plans of what I want to build and the people I want to see do well along this journey with me. I'm not too worried about the state of the game. The work that's been done so far may not be completely visible since we don't want to spoil too much without everything looking the way we want it to for first impressions, but it is done and we can move forward with it even if some devs or team members have to take time off or can't afford to wait around for funding for too long. I think people involved in our project are aware that we're not too much in a rush but want to show something good and long-standing once it is ready compared to multi-million dollar gaming projects/companies just shutting their doors after their VC's have made a quick buck. We're here to bring something you may be playing for years to come and potentially even future generations because Hive isn't going anywhere and neither are we.
This is not meant to be taken as financial advice, who knows what can happen in the future, but as long as I'm here and mentally and physically capable I will keep pushing for this project forward similar to many other projects I've built here on Hive. I am grateful to others who've helped out along the way and the amazing community (especially artists at this point in time), whether to make a quick hive profit or stuck around for the long-term, you've all helped in different ways and I hope it'll be worth it not just for all of you but for the ecosystem of Hive as a whole.
Alright, enough emotions for now, just wanted to give you all a small update that we're still "alive" but that things may be delayed, do with that as you wish. Will be reblogging this post for those who may follow
