A Glimpse into the Pinnacle of Blockchain Games through Dark Forest and Loot: On-Chain Games (Part 1)

Author: Kaspar, Mask Network

Special thanks to core members & evangelists of the Loot Chinese community, and veteran Loot holders @Taylor Zhang, as well as active players of Dark Forest and core members of DF Archon @byeddy. Their guidance and patience in answering the annoying author's questions have given the author a clearer and deeper understanding of both ecosystems. Grateful!!

This topic consists of 3 articles, this is 【Part 1: The Beginning and Dark Forest】 →

[Part 2: A Comprehensive View of the Loot Ecosystem] →

[Part 3: Insights from Dark Forest and Loot, and Future Possibilities]

1. Introduction

The concept of blockchain games has existed for a very long time, and it can even be said that without the imagination of chain games, there would be no blockchain today.

After all, the seed of the towering tree that is Ethereum was planted when the evil centralized games "raided" players, that year when Blizzard severely nerfed Warlocks, which made a once bright-eyed young Warlock boy cry like a baby. From then on, World of Warcraft lost a Warlock, and the world gained a Vitalik Buterin, who became a beacon for countless people.

If we take two steps forward in time, we can see that the starting point of the now extremely important standard ERC-721 also came from a game called CryptoKitty, which caused the first serious congestion on the Ethereum network and inspired the emergence of the progenitor of X2E, Axie Infinity, opening a new era.

With the wealth effect of the NFT wave in 2021 and the rise of the BSC ecosystem, many project teams turned their attention to the age-old allure of games, and the concept of blockchain games was raised again, leading to a "seemingly rapid" development cycle for chain games.

However, as of today in 2023, when we face over 2,000 chain games, with only about 700,000 daily active users whose human-machine ratio is unknown, and a market value that has been slashed to the heel, have we realized our initial imagination of chain games? From this scene filled with the corpses of X2Earn games, it is hard to get a positive answer.

2. Fully On-Chain Game

2.1 What Exactly is "GameFi"

It is very difficult to discuss the reasons for their failures, as everyone has a different definition of success. Perhaps on some level, they have also achieved their own success. What people really want to understand is why they have not been able to sustain themselves well, and how the genre of games can better grow in the soil of blockchain?

Returning to the early days of chain games, the term GameFi was truly popularized by the soul figure of the DeFi field, Yearn Finance's CEO Andre Cronje, in a tweet in September 2020, where he expressed that the idea of incorporating gamification mechanisms into monetary policy systems was very interesting, capable of transforming the then DeFi environment dominated by trading projects (TradFi) and making DeFi more gamified (GameFi).

Thus, two lines of thought emerged at that time:

• One is DeFi Gamification: combining DeFi and NFT, where the mechanics still revolve around staking yields, but with an added layer of NFT, such as the then Aavegotchi and Meme;
• The other is Game DeFi-ification: reducing other aspects of the game, strengthening the economic model, and aligning game actions towards staking yields, which became known as Play2Earn, essentially liquidity mining, with the most popular example being the then Axie Infinity.

Regardless of which line of thought, the core always revolves around Fi, with the user base primarily consisting of DeFi users focused on input-output.

However, the explosive success of Axie attracted many game developers and even players themselves, who thought, "If this game can be done like this, I can do it too." Thus, a flood of GameFi projects began to hit the market, all claiming to be true decentralized games, using the name Game to Fi everyone, ultimately leading to the conclusion that there are only speculators in blockchain.

Some people in these projects simply do not care, while among those who do care, most have never been able to clarify that GameFi was never about Game from the start. Gamification and Game are fundamentally two different things.

2.2 Classification of Blockchain Game Forms

If we briefly break down the modules of a game, we can roughly divide them into three parts:

1. Narrative Part: The background of the game universe and the stories of characters, establishing player motivation. Even simple casual games can have impactful narratives, such as Angry Birds;
2. Core Game Logic: The main interactive content for players, designed through various elements and rules in the game engine, also including backend calculations and rendering;
3. Economic Model: The production, consumption, and correlation logic of assets and currencies, including their relation to external currencies (fiat).

2.2.1 On-Chain Assets (OCA)

Most current chain games mainly modify the economic model by putting currencies and some assets on-chain, but the core game logic and calculations, as well as narrative and governance, remain centralized. In a report by Jump Crypto, this type of game is referred to as On-Chain Assets (OCA).

On this basis, the act of putting currencies and assets on-chain, while increasing circulation efficiency, does not have as significant an impact as we might imagine. Centralized regulatory policies can also cause players' assets to instantly become worthless, and when the project team runs away, how much value remains in the so-called permanent assets held by players?

2.2.2 Optional Cosmetic Mints (OCM)

There is also a model with less association with blockchain that is still used by some games. This model is often employed by early traditional games looking to enter web3 in a very short time.

In the OCM model, everything is managed centrally, just like traditional web2 games, with asset and currency issuance also being centralized. However, players have the option to mint certain assets they hold in the game into NFTs to achieve free circulation. At the same time, game developers may sell certain rights or functionalities in the form of NFTs.

The above two types of games can be called games that use blockchain technology, but they clearly cannot be termed decentralized blockchain games. Therefore, as more people understand this situation, an increasing number of eyes have begun to focus on truly decentralized games: Fully On-Chain Games.

2.2.3 Fully On-Chain Games (FOC)

Fully On-Chain Games refer to games where all interactions and target states are completely on-chain, meaning that the core game logic and asset economic models are processed via blockchain, using the blockchain as the game server, and all player operations are completed through interactions with smart contracts. Even the game's narrative and governance can be decentralized through DAO, achieving true decentralized gaming.

Currently, the field of fully on-chain games has just entered its infancy, with some very interesting games emerging, such as @Conquest, @Tropology's MuMu, @0xCurio's Treaty, Paradigm's 0xMonaco, and the once very popular Wolf Game. Of course, two towering giants in this field remain Dark Forest and Loot.

3. The Dual Titans of Fully On-Chain: Dark Forest

Dark Forest is inspired by the famous science fiction novel "The Dark Forest," the second book in the Three-Body Problem series. It is the first fully on-chain game with incomplete information.

As a space MMORTS game, it can accommodate thousands of players exploring, building, and conquering each other in a randomly generated infinite universe, while all players' actions and states are updated on-chain but not disclosed to others.

3.1 Background & History

The original idea and founder of Dark Forest is @Gubsheep, who was inspired after attending a conference on zero-knowledge proofs and was captivated by the dark forest theory described by Liu Cixin. Thus, the idea of using zero-knowledge proofs to create a "dark forest in the encrypted world" was born. (Note: The Mask team once helped Brian contact the copyright holder of the Three-Body Problem and gifted him a signed copy by Liu Cixin.)

Initially, this was a very experimental and somewhat playful idea. After all, games, as high-frequency interactive applications, face enormous challenges in the blockchain environment, both then and now. Not to mention applying the nascent zero-knowledge proofs to such a complex system. No one expected that Dark Forest would not only realize this concept but also become a milestone in blockchain history.

The early Dark Forest team consisted of Gubsheep, @Alan, @Ivan, and @Moe.

The team officially launched the first test version v0.3 of the game on August 7, 2020, deployed on the Ethereum Ropsten test network. Players needed to obtain an early access invitation code to participate in the game. After one week of testing, the version was settled and deleted, with rankings based on points earned, and a prize pool of 1024 DAI set for the top 15 players, with the first place receiving 256 DAI. Shortly after its launch, this version received a personal endorsement from Vitalik Buterin.

As the community grew, more members and volunteers joined, including @Scott Sunarto, @spencecoin.eth, @Andy, who all made significant contributions to the development of Dark Forest.

On October 2, 2020, Dark Forest's v0.4 version was officially launched, deployed on the xDAI STAKE network, with the number of participating players doubled compared to v0.3. It also adopted a Burner Wallet (disposable wallet) and extended the open time to 10 days. Similar to v0.3, players needed an invitation code to participate, and a prize pool of 1024 DAI was also allocated to the top 15 players on the final leaderboard.

Dark Forest's v0.5 version launched on Christmas 2020, with the open time extended to 14 days (2020/12/25 - 2021/01/08). This version introduced a very important plugin system and added special NFTs that could be explored.

The v0.6 version is the latest version of Dark Forest, divided into 5 rounds over a span of 9 months, adding many new features and game elements, and featuring a very interesting “Epic Story”.

3.2 How to Participate

Currently, the official v0.6 version of Dark Forest has ended, and no news about the next round has been announced. Based on past versions, players can fill in their email on the zkga.me website to enter the invitation code candidate list. Players who earned points in the last round will receive invitation codes before the game starts. Generally, players with extra invitation codes will share them in Dark Forest's official Discord, and regular players can try their luck.

In addition to the official rounds, players can also pay attention to community rounds organized by relevant communities, such as the early MarrowDAO's “For Pioneer” and dfDAO's “New Year Community Round”.

On March 1, 2022, the Dark Forest team launched the Lobbies system, allowing the community to quickly set up a game server with one click. Subsequently, communities and individuals, including 277DAO, have used this system to host several community rounds.

If you just want to experience the basic game operations of Dark Forest, you can create a small universe in the Lobbies on the Dark Forest official website or in the Arena system developed by dfDAO. For those with some programming experience, you can use the DarkForest local version provided by ProjectSophon for an experience.

3.3 Core Gameplay

As a real-time strategy (RTS) game, resources are the core of gameplay, and the most essential resource is the energy of celestial bodies. Players complete the guarding and occupation of celestial bodies by transmitting energy, exploring throughout the randomly generated universe. In this process, players will earn as many points as possible according to the rules, which will determine their rankings and rewards.

Each round of the game has different scoring rules. Commonly, points are converted based on the total resources players have obtained, and there are also special rules like in v0.6.3, where points are determined based on the distance of the player's planets from the center of the universe.

In this section, only a brief introduction to the game's interface and core elements will be provided. For a more comprehensive and detailed understanding, it is recommended to check MarrowDAO's “Incomplete Guide to Dark Forest” and Spencecoin's video introduction on YouTube.

3.3.1 Core Elements

• Fog of War: The core of an incomplete information game, presented as gray areas. Players can place an exploration cursor in designated areas, which will explore based on the CPU or GPU's hash rate;
• Celestial Bodies:
• Types: As of the latest DF v0.6, there are Planet, Spacetime Rip (Black Hole), Asteroid Field, Quasar, and Foundry types of celestial bodies. Different types have different functions; generally, planets serve as main bases, black holes are used for extracting and transporting artifacts, asteroid fields produce silver mines, quasars serve as energy and silver mine storage, and foundries produce artifacts. Each type of celestial body has levels and rankings set, with attributes divided into the following 7 types:
• [Attribute/Resource] Energy: Presented as "current energy/maximum energy (e.g., 100 / 400)", it is the core resource in the game, the only consumption during defense, attack, and transport. After transmitting energy to the target celestial body, if the energy value exceeds the target body's (current energy x defense coefficient), it can occupy that celestial body;
• [Attribute/Resource] Sliver: Presented as "current silver/maximum silver storage (e.g., 0 / 100)", it is also a core resource in the game. It is a necessary consumable for upgrading planets and will be counted as points when transported to a black hole withdraw;
• [Attribute] Energy Growth: Except for Quasar, other celestial bodies will continuously generate energy over time based on this rate and current energy ratio until reaching the energy limit of that celestial body;
• [Attribute] Sliver Growth: The rate of silver production;
• [Attribute] Defense: A percentage coefficient representing how much of the current energy value can withstand energy attacks. If the current energy is 200 and defense is 300, it can withstand 600 energy attacks; if defense is 50, it can only withstand 100 energy attacks;
• [Attribute] Speed: Determines the speed of resource transmission;
• [Attribute] Range: In the dark forest, energy transmission will decay with distance, and this value represents the maximum distance at which energy transmission decays to zero;
• Artifact: Artifacts are special NFTs (ERC-721) with powerful abilities, which can only be obtained from Foundry or secondary trading. There are two types: one-time use and reusable. Currently, there are 9 types of artifacts, including Spaceship (the Spaceship artifact was removed in v0.6.5 and replaced with a new setting);
• Spaceships: In the last round of DF v0.6, the official introduced the Spaceship setting, where players start with 5 different types of spaceships, each providing significant bonuses to celestial bodies;
• Points: The basis for determining player rankings, composed of the energy and silver quantities of all celestial bodies occupied by the player (v0.6.3 is an exception).

3.3.2 Interface

• Login Interface

  Users entering the official website will first see a command-line-style login interface.

  However, users only need to fill in the corresponding number to complete wallet creation, and the created wallet will store the private key in the browser's memory.

  If you need to switch browsers or computers, you must export the private key and import it again on the new device.

  

• Game Interface

  

  After logging in, players will enter an initial interface like this, with the player's randomly assigned home planet in the center.

  The red box in the lower right corner contains the previously mentioned attribute information, with information about celestial body types and ownership below;

  The red circle in the upper left corner shows the player's current points;

  The code feed on the right records and provides feedback on all actions, showing whether actions have successfully been recorded on-chain;

  If you zoom out your view, you will see the blue area filled with gray fog of war and the cursor exploring grid by grid;

  At this point, the game officially begins. Players can hold their home planet and drag the mouse to the target planet they want to occupy to complete the first energy transmission.

3.3.3 Simple Game Flow

Dark Forest is a very free and open MMO strategy game, and each round's game mechanics will have slight variations, so players need to freely exercise their imagination to build strategies both in-game and out of game. (Yes, you can totally engage in deception in various communities to achieve victory LOL)

Generally speaking, the earliest phase of the game is a resource accumulation period. During this stage, players typically install their preferred plugins and start expanding their vision, looking for suitable planets in the black areas of Deep Space outside the blue Nebula as early bases, continuously consolidating their base network while searching for artifacts to increase their strength.

With a solid early foundation, players can deploy different tactical strategies according to their styles, whether they are exploration-oriented players yearning for the stars, artifact merchants wanting to make some money, or aggressive players advocating for conflict, there is plenty of room to showcase their skills.

Here, I recommend an article shared by MarrowDAO member @xiangcai.eth titled “Personal Strategy Insights on Dark Forest”, which will be a great reference for new players.

If you want to understand larger-scale wars, you can check out this battle recorded by spencecoin, a cosmic battle between top players Ner0nzz (ranked 2nd in v0.6.1) and 0x000da (ranked 7th in v0.6.2) under privately agreed rules. Ner0nzz also elaborated on the entire battle from his perspective in an article.

3.4 Why Dark Forest Shines

We have quickly introduced the definition of fully on-chain games and Dark Forest, but why is Dark Forest so important? Why has a game that looks quite rough and simple become an unavoidable name in the deepening of the crypto world or the process of on-chain games? This requires understanding what Dark Forest has actually achieved:

3.4.1 Technical Aspects: FOC + zk-SNARK

• Fully On-Chain (FOC)

  Before Dark Forest, the feasibility of fully on-chain games had always been a conceptual hypothesis because games are quite different from other applications, especially when it comes to achieving real-time online multiplayer games, which have extremely high sensitivity to network latency and require high-intensity interactions.

  For example, in MMORPGs or MOBA games, a player might perform over 10 actions in a second, which differs from ordinary applications that only require interaction with the system. These actions involve not only the system but also other players currently interacting, and each action needs to receive immediate feedback to advance the game's progress, which was clearly impossible on the Ethereum network, which averaged only 12-15 TPS at that time.

  Moreover, putting the entire game on-chain means that all these interactive programs need to be deployed in the form of smart contracts, posing significant challenges for game type selection and game logic design.

  Dark Forest was the first project to implement this conceptual idea, deploying all game rules and logic as contracts on-chain, allowing the state of players and the universe to be updated in real-time on-chain after any interaction occurs. Therefore, even today, Dark Forest can still be considered one of the most complex applications in the entire blockchain.

• zk-SNARK for Incomplete Information Games

  In game types, if we classify them based on the degree of information participants possess, they can be divided into complete information games and incomplete information games. The difference lies in whether participants can fully grasp all information from each other. A typical example of a complete information game is chess, where the board is public, so participants make decisions based on the same information; while a typical example of an incomplete information game is poker, where, in addition to the five public cards on the table, players have their own two hidden cards, which increases the challenge of decision-making.

  In online video games, the most typical element of incomplete information games is the "fog of war," which achieves information asymmetry by obscuring vision. However, this method was almost impossible to implement in previous blockchains because once all game interaction logic is on-chain, players' interaction content and states would also be updated on-chain, becoming transparent and traceable, thus rendering the fog of war meaningless.

  

  However, Dark Forest was the first to adopt the zero-knowledge proof algorithm zkSNARK, achieving the concealment of player interaction information, making incomplete information games on the blockchain feasible, while also enriching the application scenarios of zk technology and the possibilities of fully on-chain games.

3.4.2 Experience Aspects: A Game Ecosystem That Fully Adheres to Crypto Ideals, Free, Open, and Highly Combinable

The model of open-source fully on-chain games endows Dark Forest with a very important characteristic: "Permissionless Interoperability."

Dark Forest is essentially an Ethereum smart contract, akin to a protocol or rules, which first means it is not limited by specific clients (Client Agnostic). Anyone capable can create a front-end client in their preferred visual form to call the backend contract parameters; at the same time, this also means any address can interact with it, whether the address is a person, a bot, or another smart contract. This not only expands the boundaries of game strategies but also gives rise to a prosperous plugin ecosystem.

In this ecosystem, players spontaneously combine, construct, and experiment with various things and gameplay, forming an organic community. The things created during this process have far exceeded the official expectations, such as artifact trading markets, celestial body trading markets, planet bounty systems, and even battle AIs. The emergence of these plugins adds more game objectives and gameplay, allowing more types of players to participate. The introduction of the Lobby system and the development of on-chain engines have further liberated the rules, allowing players to freely set the universe's rules to conduct games.

This open and highly combinable attribute undoubtedly greatly expands the boundaries of game possibilities, allowing players themselves to participate in the construction of the game experience rather than relying solely on the official team.

3.5 The Ecosystem of Dark Forest

As mentioned above, with the development of Dark Forest, the ecosystem has become a very important existence. It can even be said that after the core rules/contracts were deployed, the official team had little to do with it. Just as they position themselves, they are like scientists in a laboratory, setting up the growth environment of the petri dish and quietly waiting for the free development and evolution of the microbial community. Here, I will provide a brief depiction of some verifiable communities and plugin ecosystems. For a comprehensive understanding, it is highly recommended to personally participate in the entire ecosystem:

3.5.1 Community Ecosystem

• Dark Forest: First, the official community, which serves as the petri dish itself, the concept of an ecological square. Besides specific activities or announcements and daily problem-solving, there is little operational behavior;
• Project Sophon: An American team that firmly does not consider itself a DAO organization, highly recognizes Dark Forest's philosophy and vision, and has close cooperation with the core team, becoming an inseparable part of the Dark Forest ecosystem. They possess strong technical capabilities, focusing on infrastructure-level technical construction. They once wrote a Dark Forest local library allowing users to start a game round either off-chain or on-chain;
• Orden_GG: A very hardcore Ukrainian gaming organization, with high standards in both coding ability and gaming technology. They have topped the leaderboard for 4 consecutive rounds in v0.6 and are also quality builders in the ecosystem, having constructed an artifact trading market and added liquidity pools. Additionally, they are core players of Aavegotchi and even created an open-source client for this game;
• D_F DAO: A DAO established during the v0.6 version, primarily composed of Americans, focusing on innovating game experiences. They also have excellent development capabilities, creating many interesting things in the Dark Forest universe, including the Astral Colossus (a smart contract allowing members to contribute their galaxies to the contract for collective victory), and the modified version of Dark Forest, Dark Forest Arena (a MOBA-style DF competitive game). They are also adept at organizing and experimenting with new strategies in the game. Overall, they have good brand promotion and operations, making them a very vibrant community in Dark Forest;
• MarrowDAO|GuildW: A Chinese DAO composed of Chinese members, actively assisting in the expansion and promotion of the Dark Forest ecosystem, serving as core evangelists of Dark Forest, especially within the Chinese-speaking community. MarrowDAO has produced many high-quality articles and strategy shares internally, along with notable development capabilities, having developed several plugins, including the artifact trading market and GPU rendering tools. They were also the first organization to host community rounds in the entire Dark Forest ecosystem. At that time, without the Lobby system, the community had to modify the client and contract code themselves, which required significant effort and technical skill;
• 277DAO: A Chinese community focused on blockchain games, skilled in organizing events. After the launch of Dark Forest's Lobby system, they hosted 5 consecutive community tournaments. They are also major evangelists in the Chinese-speaking area, translating and writing many tutorials and materials related to Dark Forest, and developing some interesting small plugins;
• DF Archon: A developer group focused on fully on-chain games, primarily engaged in developing and integrating many plugins in the Dark Forest ecosystem. They have also made the tool functions in DF more user-friendly by encapsulating them into DF-Gaia, allowing developers and players to use them better. They also created the first celestial body bounty system DF-ARTEMIS in Dark Forest;
• P DAO: A relatively mysterious small-scale Chinese organization that emerged in the v0.6.5 round. Unlike large DAOs with extensive plugin usage and group expansion strategies, P DAO focuses more on efficient collaboration among team members, achieving excellent results with 7 members occupying the top ten in v0.6.5 through full voice communication and shift rotation strategies.

3.5.2 Plugin Ecosystem

Plugins are a very important part of the entire Dark Forest. Currently, there are 55 open-source plugins officially reviewed and included in the plugin library. Here, I will only provide a brief overview.

We can roughly categorize plugins into three main types based on their usage:

1. Visualization: Due to the relatively simple native game interface of Dark Forest, many plugins have emerged to help present information better. Commonly used ones include:

• Data Visualization: Heat Map, Mini Map, Voyage Time (calculates transmission time between planets), Map Filter Export developed by DF Archon, etc.

  

• Highlighting or Marking Specific Targets: Essential plugins for grouping developed by DF Archon, such as Peace Dove (Friendly Identifier) and Highlight Friends, as well as Highlight Buffs for highlighting celestial body buffs, etc.

  

1. Trading Markets: Mainly facilitating the exchange of different resources among players, providing new gaming motivations, including but not limited to:

• Artifact Trading Market: D_F DAO's Artifact Market, Marrow DAO's Dark Sea;
• Coordinate Bounty Market: Developed using zk technology by 0xSage and xyz_pierre, NightMarket, and Project Sophon's Broadcast Market;
• Planet Bounty Market: DF Archon's Artemis;

1. Automation: These plugins are usually used more frequently, mainly simplifying originally complex and tedious operations through scripts to enhance execution efficiency:

• Resource-Related: Hunt Artifacts (for capturing and managing artifacts), Artifactory, Distribute Silver (one-click allocation of silver), Centralize Resources (one-click resource gathering), etc.

  

• Combat-Related: Crawl Planets (one-click capture of surrounding planets), Repeat Attack (automatically repeat attacks), Simultaneous Attack (one-click coordinated attacks), and even Wage War (directly declare war on players), etc.

In addition to the open-source plugins officially reviewed, there are many plugins or clients developed independently by players or communities, thus creating a rich gaming experience and diverse gameplay. Some community players have even developed an AI that can play Dark Forest.

This open ecological model, which revolves around the core universe rules and infinitely expands into rich content, allows players to freely construct game experiences and combine tools, giving Dark Forest broader possibilities than traditional centralized games.

To be continued…

→ “Part 2: A Comprehensive View of the Loot Ecosystem”

→ “Part 3: Insights from Dark Forest and Loot, and Future Possibilities”