BlackPool Apes Meet the Guild of Guardians

There aren't many people who follow the gaming space who haven't heard of Guild of Guardians, the upcoming mobile NFT powered RPG play-and-earn title by Stepico Games and published by Immutable. Since its' inception, the game has captivated audiences, with over 200,000 players currently waiting for the launch of the beta version.

On the surface, the game is reminiscent of the Diablo clones of yore with a 3D isometric look and a focus on leading a team of heroes across a wide array of dungeons, scrounging for loot. The dynamic is quite familiar to anyone who's played any MMORPG in the past - you get your classic DPS, tank, healer and support classes, taking them on adventures across the GoG universe and collecting resources used later for crafting and trading. The goal of the game is to create the strongest team possible, climb the leaderboard and win prizes.

We had the special opportunity to play the pre-alpha version of the game, so here's our first hand take on what's waiting in store for you when the next version launches!

BlackPool Apes x The Guardians

In short - we feel the game is very good for a pre alpha version. One specific thing to take into account is that the version we played is a Web2 version, without a connection to Web3 except for tracking player stats, linked to the accounts that were given by the team.

The entire experience was fun, easy to understand and with a plethora of different environments to fight in. Surprisingly, the entire feel of the game was quite polished and it didn't look much different from any other mobile game.

The game is deceptively simple, but as the player delves deeper and strategy becomes more important, both through team item distribution/crafting and merging different heroes (you need 8 different ones or 5 same ones in total) into next tier heroes, a complex and competitive world arises. Case in point was the fact that the discrepancy between normal players and the best players in the game was quite visible on the leaderboard once the pre-alpha was completed.

What was very present as well was a feeling of wanting to play more, an essential ingredient for any successful game ever produced!

What makes us quite bullish on the game is the fact that after the pre-alpha was completed, the team conducted a survey, as well as a number of AMAs with the community, gathering feedback and being quite responsive to the requests of the player base.

Looking Forward

The Apes were very excited to play the game and look forward to playing again in the next run. There are a number of new components to be added to the game in the upcoming versions, from PvP, across crafting to dedicated trading areas. What piques our interest most is how all components are going to function in the interplay of Web3, once it goes live.

Another key aspect to track in the game development are guilds. Guilds will consist of teams of 20-50 players, with leaders receiving a percentage of the sales of crafted items within the guild. Additionally, being a part of the guild will provide players with access to exclusive game modes and events! With the possibility of crafting items and sharing them amongst guild members, it will be interesting to see how this next level of strategy plays out between larger teams playing the game.

The game has all elements needed to onboard the next generation of  gamers from Web2 to Web3, what remains to be seen is how this stellar team is going to go about connecting these two universes in the most effective way.

The Apening

BlackPool Apes have been following the development of GoG since its' inception, and because of our confidence in the development of this title we decided to invest in size. We initially bought one of the only 10 mythic guilds quite early and continue to accumulate heroes regularly, with around 100 ETH spent so far.

We look forward to the next version of the game and wish the best to the Stepico Games team, who moved a part of their studio from Ukraine since the start of the war and still keep building with no delays!