In this post, I dive in to another idea for what we could do to expand the Splinterlands universe outside of the current game. This time, I'm looking at the idea of creating a Roblox game which I'm calling Splinterlands Dungeons.
Just to be 100% clear, ALL OF THIS IS PURELY CONCEPTUAL AND DONE FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES. Sure, someone (you? company? DAO?) could adapt this concept (and make it better, hopefully) to create a Roblox game. But none of what you see below goes any farther, at this time, than a Hive post.
With that out of the way, let's dig in!
Splinterlands Dungeons is a Dungeon Crawler built on Roblox, similar to the extremely popular Dandy's World which has so far had a total of nearly 4 billion visits and nearly 900k concurrent users at its peak.
The basic premise of Dungeons is to build a game users enjoy and want to grind in order to collect more characters and go farther and farther into the dungeon. Players would get exclusive but limited in-game benefits if they own certain Splinterlands assets, and would get cosmetic benefits in Splinterlands for their achievements in Dungeons.
In Splinterlands Dungeons, players start in the Lobby, where they can chat with each other, buy items in the the Shop, unlock new characters at the Tavern, and form parties to enter the Dungeon. They enter dungeons together an go down progressively harder levels to grind for Gold and Shards, which they use to improve the party for future runs.
✅ Players can chat with each other
✅ Players can access the Shop and Tavern
✅ Players can enter the Dungeon together (maximum of 8 players in a party)
The Lobby has a magical Dark Energy fountain at its center, and is encircled by Gwen's Trinket Shop shop, the Hero's Tavern, and entrances to the Cursed Dungeon
✅ Players start each run on Floor 1, and start each floor together in the starting zone
✅ The party's objective is to extract all the Dark Energy Essence Pools and then meet at the Exit Portal to proceed to the next floor
✅ When players find a Dark Energy Essence Pool, they need to perform a series of skill checks to extract the essence from the pool; This process grants Shards (see below) and is necessary to proceed to the next floor
✅ Each floor has a number of Chaos Guards who attack the players; Floors get progressively harder (more & stronger guards)
✅ The run ends when all players are defeated
✅ Players can find Gold on the floor of the dungeon, which can be exchanged for items and upgrades in the Shop; Players also earn Gold every time they complete a floor
✅ Players can find Shards in chests within the dungeon, which can be used to unlock new characters
✅ Gold and Shards would both be in-game currencies which cannot be withdrawn from the game or exchanged for anything other than in-game items; They would also be purchasable with Robux
✅ Players can exchange Gold to buy equipment, items, and trinkets
✅ Equipment increases a characters speed, health, or armor
✅ Items are consumables that can be used to replenish health, boost speed temporarily, or decrease a skill's cooldown
✅ Each character has 2 trinkets which can be bought only after the player has unlocked that character in the Tavern, and can be equipped to give additional bonuses or skills to a character during a run
Gwen's shop is accessible from the Lobby and sells a variety of equipment, consumable items, and trinkets to help players in their dungeon runs
✅ Players can exchange Shards for new characters
✅ Certain characters are only unlockable if a user owns the card on Splinterlands
✅ Certain characters are only available after completing certain "quests" (such as defeating the Chaos Guard version of that character)
✅ New characters are added regularly with game updates to keep players chasing new characters
Characters come in two flavors: as Playable Characters which players can select for their dungeon runs, and as Chaos Guards which players must avoid and/or defeat in the dungeon.
✅ When entering the Dungeon, players select one of their available playable characters (which they unlock at the Hero's Tavern) and choose what equipment & items it will bring along
✅ Each character has a distinct set of Stats (health, armor, speed, attack power, attack type) and Abilities
✅ Abilities include team buffs, enemy debuffs, defensive/restorative abilities (such as healing and cleanse) and offensive abilities (such as stun and push-back)
✅ Playable Characters each play different roles in a party (tanks, distractors, extractors, support, etc.)
Playable characters would resemble and have abilities inspired by their respective counterparts in Splinterlands
✅ Chaos Guards are enemies that Players must face in the Dungeon and avoid or defeat as they make their way further into the Dungeon
✅ Just like Playable characters, each Chaos Guard has different Stats (health, armor, speed, attack power, attack type) and Abilities (though these will differ for characters that can act both as playable or enemy characters)
✅ Certain Playable Characters will require players to complete Quests before they're able to unlock them at the Tavern, such as encountering a certain Chaos Guard character a certain amount of times
✅ Every 5th floor, one or more Chaos Bosses may appear, and these have higher Stats and stronger Abilities than regular Chaos Guards
Tying Splinterlands Dungeons to Splinterlands in some way would help turn it into a potential player acquisition channel for Splinterlands, while also giving an incentive to Splinterlands players to try it out. There are, however, risks and considerations that must be taken into account when it comes to Crypto and Roblox.
(1) Glamour could be a cosmetic benefit that goes both ways, e.g.:
(2) Having a certain amount of Staked SPS could give players a discount at Gwen's Trinkets and the Hero's Tavern.
(3) Promo or Voucher events on Splinterlands could be matched in Splinterlands Dungeons (e.g. Kelan only available in the Hero's Tavern when he's also available in the Voucher shop).
(4) Splinterlands Dungeons players could have special items available to them in Gwen's Store based on certain assets they own in Splinterlands (including but not limited to Land)
Roblox is VERY STRICT on ensuring their platform remains "kid-friendly, scam-free, and compliant with regulatory scrutiny." It's important if we go down the route of a Roblox game to ensure we're very careful about how tie-ins are enabled, and how they are communicated in the game.
🚫 Roblox currently prohibits:
✅ Keep blockchain off-platform:
✅ Don’t mention crypto/NFTs explicitly in-game:
✅ Use off-chain equivalents:
✅ Whitelist access:
I gave the rough spec to ChatGPT and it estimated that building such a game would cost $50-100k and take 6-7 months with a team of 3-6 people. I did not validate this with any Roblox developers, so I don't know if this is realistic.
Whether the return we'd get from this investment would be higher than the cost is hard to say. It would of course depend on the quality of the game, the extent to which it can get traction with existing Roblox players, whether it would be a revenue driver on its own (e.g. via Robux spend within the game), and the extent to which any built-in tie-ins drive value to Splinterlands. While revenue figures for successful Roblox games like Dandy's World are typically not public, fairly conservative estimations based on the number of visits and conversion rate (to in-game item purchases) puts them in the tens of millions of dollars.
So what do you think? Would you prioritize something like this?
All of the art in this post was created using AI, with both ChatGPT and Midjourney; Compositions were done using Figma
