I am passionate hearthstone player and I really love video games. I was recently taking a course from Loom on how to program a smart contract and got to their telegram where they just started promoting their new Kickstarter Crypto game - Zombie Battleground.
The game has already gotten a lot of funding on Kickstarter, but the game is not available yet.
The game is being developed by Loom Network. This is a blockchain startup which is developing Loom DAppChain. They want to solve the problem of Ethereum scaling by using their sidechains and providing the ability to secure data transferring. This idea is quite interesting and has its right to exist. But so far, there is no interest from other developers (at least it is unnoticeable). Their platform is used by only a single project DelegateCall.com (this is a Q&A site like stackoverflow.com), which has been made by themselves. They also have 3 games for their platform in progress. The plan is to raise the awareness of the sidechain by creating their own games and showing success cases.
The development team of the Zombie Battleground is headed by Roy Shapira. Before joining Loom Network, he has been working for 12 years as a game designer in various companies, which tells us that he has quite a lot of experience (although he doesn’t have any outstanding projects in his entire career). The rest of the team is more like random outsourcers from all over the world, mostly from Thailand. So, it turns out that the team consists of an experienced, but not very successful game designer and a diverse group of performers who are working from 15 different countries.
Well, let’s look at the game itself. At the outset it is clear that this is a sheer clone of Hearthstone. We all know copying is very common in game industry. Patent isn’t issued on game mechanics. But there is a fine line between creating a similar project using similar mechanics and full copying. And this is a criminal offence. You could hear about game developers’ lawsuits against each other. Usually, the basis is the copying of the game interface, because this is an easier way to prove the guilt. Judge for yourself:
The game setting is zombie (as in all Loom Network projects). There is nothing unique about this setting. The lore hasn’t been adequately elaborated. No their own ideas, no history. It’s just zombies fighting with each other. They compensate the lack of essential basis of any good card game by copying on the verge of a lawsuit. Like for $300,000 I am expecting much more.
So we have a full clone of the Hearthstone and don’t have any information why this can be better than the original. Instead, there is a weak team, cheap art, the absence of a lore and no innovative game mechanics.
Let’s sum up. The main reason for creating this game is advertising of their main product. This means that if the developers plan to make an excellent game, this is still not a priority. Instead, they try to find any possible ways to save money. They hired a “cheap labour”, copied the gameplay and an interface. They didn’t invent anything new. They parasitize on someone else’s intellectual property.
I am also pretty sure the kickstarter project got self funded. If you can't beat them, join them motto.