BlackPool Bossfight #1 : The Bornless

What in the Ape is BlackPool Bossfight? A freshly delivered concept to you, every... whenever we want. An impartial and 100% objective web3 game review, with a grade at the end. For happiness and tears.

So this week, let's kick off this new concept with a game you already know we like: The Bornless.

Dancing with the stars

What is The Bornless? How can we play it if it isn't born yet? Calm down, we will explain everything.

To be very technical, The Bornless is a FPS Horror Battle Royale. 8 players, a (big) beautiful map, and a little spice. No zone in this game, but a friend you don't want to invite to your party: Orobas.

In this dark and gloomy mood, you and your friend will gather Incense (the in-game currency) to make a tough decision every round: do you burn it to become more holy, or do you keep some to buy more weapons and ammunitions?

Because of course, the most unholy team will be chased by our friend Orobas (more demons to come, but for the moment there is only this weird guy. Get ready for the spider demon folks).

And to burn this specific incense, you need a Cauldron, changing its position every minute, pushing all the players to gather around the same place to make the same decision again, while shooting at the same time.

Pretty simple concept, easy to understand and really REALLY hard to master. Getting Orobas on your back, just because you burnt less incense than another team is a bit annoying.

See you at the next Orobas stop

Talking about gameplay, everything here serves the atmosphere. Minimalistic HUD (no crosshair, the bare minimum on screen) with a 1920's Lovecraftian mood: smooth jazz in a destroyed house, a looted cemetery, a half finished quarry... If you've ever opened  a Lovecraft book, you will feel at home. Not the comfortable home, but at home.

Of course, friendly fire is active, the incense scarcity is pretty high and you will need to buy weapons and ammunition close to the active cauldron. So all the biggest decisions have to be made before even starting the game. Do we neglect the demon and aggressively hunt all the other teams? Or do we burn all our incense and play hide and seek around the next cauldrons?

World of Lovecraft

Such a beautiful horrific game should not come without the blockchain integration right? Well, at the moment, the whole game is in Alpha, totally off-chain.

And for the best, because the team is actually focusing on making a good game instead of making money out of it. Of course you can find the genesis collection of NFTs on OpenSea, the Incense will be a token, but they are still working on a good tokenomics not to ruin the entire experience.

The goal is not to provide a living to players entering the game, but to own everything you have in game: characters, weapons...

So, a good Play2Own, not another Play2Earn without  good gameplay? We aren't magicians, but The Bornless seems to be well on its way.

The team is actually doing a lot of testing with eSports teams, streamers, or generic players to generate feedback and improve the game. And that is actually a good green flag coming from a web3 game, not even talking about the economic part.

The devs are focusing on the game part, and the blockchain being another layer, not the end.

Conclusion

So, in the end, should you keep an eye on this bloodshed festival?
Yes, because of two main things:
- We had fun, and we play the game for our own pleasure.
- The team is focusing on the right things.

Outside of that, of course there are bugs: some unfinished textures, flaws in the menues or Orobas pathfinding, gammas going crazy... It is an Alpha release, so no surprise about that, and the devs are improving more things in every new build.

See you in the windmill, unholy apes.

• Gameplay: 7/10
• Graphics: 9/10
• Blockchain Integration: n/a
  
  Final grade: 8/10