The Town Star Development and Design team has been hard at work on incredible additions and updates to the original Gala Game of town and city builders. We know you’ll be as excited about this latest news as we are. In fact, we’re so excited that we had to make a video to mark the occasion!

The Skins that Mirandus Built

Our biggest fans and most dedicated collectors have been going wild for these Mirandus-Themed Town Star Skins, 8/10 of which have now been released in the Gala Games store.

Today we’re thrilled to announce that deploying Mirandus-Themed Town Star Skins will boost all crafting and movement speed throughout your entire town.

These awesome Town Star boosts will become active shortly after the release of Mirandus-Themed Skin Pack 10.

Details of the Bonus

The bonus works in a very straightforward way, increasing both the speed and crafting times of everyone and everything throughout your Town Star town.

There are 10 different Mirandus-Themed Skin Packs available. The more of these packs that are represented in your town, the greater your movement and production bonus will be.

For each different skin applied, your workers and production buildings will receive a 2.5% speed boost. There is a maximum of 1 bonus per Skin Pack available, meaning that even if you apply 5 skins from a single pack, you’ll only get the 2.5% boost.

Here’s where it gets interesting. With at least 1 skin applied from every pack (1–10), you’ll be getting the maximum possible bonus of +25% speed to all workers’ movement and all production in your town.

All it will take to get your speed bonus is having the skin applied to your Town Star game. It’s not even necessary for the skinned building to be part of your town. As long as the skin is active, the bonus is yours.

The First Speed Boosting Item in Town Star

There have been bots that travel faster than workers and there have been NFT items that increase storage or passive resource production, but this is the first time Town Star has seen an NFT item actually increase the speed of everything on the board.

To move 25% faster is to be 25% more productive, and to produce 25% faster is to make more money. Most importantly, with this bonus you’ll have a clear competitive edge over every player who didn’t get their hands on the skins.

Additionally, these skins have just taken a major strategic leap in terms of Town Star gameplay. Thanks to the power of blockchain-backed skin ownership, we are able to offer a unique incentive to using the Mirandus-Themed skins on your game. Just for deploying these skins, you can give you and your town an incredible advantage week after week in the Town Star competition.

The Limited Supply

This surprise release is expected to quickly cause interest in the Mirandus-Themed Town Star Skins to skyrocket. Hesitations based on the idea that skins do not provide in-game value are entirely out the window.

Each Skin Pack has a maximum supply of 10,000, but only 2000 of each are available at the current price. Future sales (and future prices) are TBD, but you can be confident that the price will increase on the remaining supply in future sales.

Don’t forget that each Skin Pack comes with an exclusive Dragon Voucher. Players who collect all 10 of these Vouchers will receive the greatest bonus of all: The Dragon Familiar of Mirandus. This Dragon will accompany your avatar on its adventures, making your friends jealous and your foes cower.

Note: This post is to give information about one of the Exemplars, The Seafarer, for the upcoming drop. We know that the community wants additional information, so this is the first of a series on the Exemplars of Mirandus, which give a bit more color to their backgrounds, activities, and insights into the in-game mechanisms. Enjoy!

Carry me home
To a ship on the sea,
Where wind, wave and foam
My spirit will free,

And if I return
To this dull and dry land,
I’ll be in an urn
Filled with ashes and sand.

The Seafarers’ Song

What do you Really Know about the Sea?

71% of the Earth that we know is water. There are approximately 321 million cubic miles of space in the oceans of this planet. Beneath their surfaces is an alien world of which we know very little. James Cameron may have explored 35,000 feet into Challenger’s Deep of the Mariana Trench all by himself, but can you imagine what it was like in the old days, before radar and computer navigation? The most daring adventurers of the past must have been those who set sail into the great unknown, the endless seas, knowing not what adventure and toil awaited them.

You’re an explorer of the sea, a seafarer. You are envied by those who are tied to their land-locked responsibilities, and you are marveled at by the most civilized people of the towns and cities. They do not understand your life. They do not feel the unbridled joy as you do when you are gently rocked by the waves. They do not know the exhilarating rush of adrenaline that accompanies a squall as it threatens to consume your crew and swallow your ship into its hungry chaos. As you know in your heart, they do not truly live.

Seafaring in Mirandus

Mirandus will take a bold step into the mysterious seas that few games have attempted to take before. The creators of this fantasy world recognize that there is a world on the waves, and an even greater one beneath them. For some, the seas of Mirandus will be a merciless enemy, a deadly wasteland from whence there is no return. For those with their sea-legs, the waters may bring untold opportunities, adventures and treasures. The greatest of those who ride the waves and adventure beyond the horizon are the Human Seafarers.

In addition to the great blue yonder, Mirandus will contain local bodies of water, such as lakes, rivers and ponds. Many of these local bodies will have their own secrets, and Seafarers will be adept at navigating them all. There will be intricate and treacherous coastlines to explore, and the Seafarers will be able to explore them with the greatest of ease. Seafarers receive a bonus to maneuvering in small watercraft as well as large ships.

The world of Mirandus is essentially one huge island, like any continent of the world. Seafarers are driven to explore outward on the water with no boundaries. If a Seafarer knows the way to an unexplored island far from home, they can sail there with little to no danger on their voyage. Seafarers can sail farther and faster than the average player. In fact, if a non-seafaring adventurer of Mirandus has coordinates to a great treasure trove miles from the shore, they would be wise to connect with a Seafarer to deliver them safely… for a price.

Just like in real life, there will be places outside the coast that cannot be visited by a mere canoe. Allowing avatars to simply canoe paddle to a distant deserted isle is a rather lame attempt at authenticity and a jarringly poor player experience. Mirandus will have true authenticity in its seafaring.

Seafarers are at home on a tossed ship, and they find their ways by the stars. They are able to row more efficiently, spending less energy than others. They can travel faster and more safely. They can avoid random encounters, and they can seek out hidden wonders using tips and maps. As long as the Seafarer knows the location of something, they can find it in the vast open sea.

The Seafarer’s Boat

The boat of a Seafarer is their closest companion, their protector and their home. Ships can hold great amounts of treasure and supplies, so in Mirandus, a Seafarer’s ship is the most secure place to stow their goods. Boats, which can be upgraded, enhanced and built upon are vessels into the least known areas of Mirandus for those who dare explore them.

A Seafarer’s boat is the most important thing in their life. While they may not tie themselves down to towns, jobs or mates, every Seafarer has a sturdy rope lashed from boat to heart. With a good boat underfoot, a Mirandus Seafarer is never far from adventure and fortune.

We hope you enjoyed the Spider Tank Alpha playtest mayhem of last weekend! Spider Tank mania is still full throttle, and five unique Tank Skins are currently available while supplies last in the Gala Games store. Development of the game is still rolling along at breakneck pace and today the team is thrilled to announce and explain the revolutionary new system of upgrades that will be used by the Spider Tank Project!

Tonight, the Legendary Lava Tank hits the store…but what does that mean?

Below is a video from Gamedia explaining the game’s upgrade system in quick detail.

This brilliantly designed system from the developers of the Spider Tank Project will be effective on multiple levels, with something to love no matter where you are coming from as a player. Free-to-play players of the Brawler/MOBA will enjoy that they can start with a free asset and grind upward to greater levels, adding value to their tanks along the way. For those who prefer to give themselves a competitive edge by purchasing NFT assets from the Gala Games Store, the advantages that come with purchased assets will be well worth it!

Basically, this system integrates drop chances with upgrades. With each level upgrade, the asset’s power increase will vary depending on a random chance. The most significant upgrade that any player can hope for is the perfect upgrade, which will only happen a small percentage of the time. However, when an already-leveled NFT is purchased from the Gala Games store, every level that it has already achieved was upgraded at the perfect level. This means that when you buy a tank as an NFT from the store, that tank is as perfect as it can possibly be.

With the exception of the Ancient level 30s, all purchased tanks can still be leveled up beyond the level at which they’re purchased, but perfect per-level upgrades are no longer guaranteed.

This upgrade system will make each level-up an exciting adventure. Players will hold their breath, hoping for the coveted perfect upgrade and in some cases, wishing they had purchased the already leveled up tank instead.
Implementing drop chances into the upgrade system will also create more variety in the game, greatly enhancing the skill and strategy required for success. The Gala Games team is beyond excited to bring this incredible game into our ecosystem, and we can hardly wait to see you all on the battlefield!

Welcome Town Star townies, Mirandus enthusiasts and play-to-earn pioneers from all over the world! It’s time for another look into the historic first series of NFT skin packs released by Gala Games.

In this series we have been going through each of the 10 Mirandus-Themed Skin Packs one by one, giving you behind the scenes looks at the creation process. We’ve highlighted many of the benefits of looking at skins from a blockchain perspective, showing you why turning them into player-owned assets is a true game changer with the potential to breathe new life into the gaming skin industry. We’ve also showed you some awesome alternate art that didn’t make the cut, demonstrating just how much time and energy from our team goes into the creation of something so seemingly simple. Hopefully you find this series as fascinating as we do! You’ll find the previous editions listed below.

Skin Pack 6
Skin Pack 7
Skin Pack 1

Scarcity

One of the greatest benefits to collectibles and NFT assets on a blockchain is provable scarcity. As long as collectibles have been around, scarcity has been perhaps the most important driver of collectible value. Take for example the T206 baseball card from 1909 depicting Pittsburg Pirates ball player Honus Wagner. Having sold at auction for over $3 million, this card is known to be one of the rarest baseball cards in existence.

The Honus Wagner card also has an interesting story that corresponds to its scarcity, as so many of the rarest collectibles in the world do. The T206 set of cards was produced and distributed by the American Tobacco Company, and while it was not the surface level intention of the campaign to appeal to them, children took quite an interest in the collectible cards. The story goes that Honus Wagner was not a fan of tobacco products being marketed to children in this way, so he demanded ATC remove his card from production.

The legitimacy of the Honus Wagner story is not nearly as verifiable as NFTs existing on a blockchain because there is no one living today who was around when the cards were new. Provable ledger history is another benefit making it clear that the future of collectibles is blockchain, but that’s another story.

Scarcity in Gala Games NFTs

As we fast-forward to 2021 when collectibles are leaving the realm of physicality, we can see the same patterns and correlations with scarcity of supply and value. The tools for understanding these patterns are now more accessible and more provable, making it an exciting new world for collectors everywhere.

Gala Games knows gaming and collectibles, and the digital assets we sell are the perfect marriage of the two. We are creating the largest own-your-experience gaming platform in the world. Our NFTs (such as skins) are driven by intrinsic collectible value, scarcity and in-game utility, making your decision as both collector and gamer as easy as possible.

Each Mirandus-Themed NFT Skin Pack is available in a limited quantity of 10,000. They are also being sold using a system of stair-step pricing that ensures each new 1/5 wave of 2000 packs will be more expensive than the last. Pricing and future sales for these packs are TBD, but we do know that this first wave will offer you the lowest possible price from the Gala Games store.

Digging into Pack 8

As we approach the final packs of the series, the Town Star buildings included are becoming more specialized and advanced. This means that in addition to just the buildings, the owner gets the dedicated workers that come with them. We’re happy to say that once again with this pack, every single building skin comes with a reimagined worker unit!

Builder House

The first couple designs for the Builder House still looked a little too modern, and with the majority of these medieval skins, that problem has been solvable by dealing with the roof. The crudely overlapping log beams on the Builder House roof ended up giving it the medieval treatment that was needed.

For the Builder unit, the long sleeved white shirt was chosen with yellow tights and hat. It is unlikely that a builder of the Middle Ages would have allowed arm skin to go carelessly exposed when it could be protected. After all, there was no workman’s comp back then.

Power Plant

To ensure that the Power Plant was still easily recognizable as an industrial building, the red and white striped smokestack was left in. The building itself was thoroughly redesigned. The split level second option was chosen, implying that the Power Plant worker lives in the top portion while working in the bottom of the building.

Refinery

These first ideas were on the right track, but there was something missing for T. Elliot Cannon, Town Star Director. After some back and forth discussion with the art team, he decided that the Refinery building should have a cone-shaped roof like pictured below.

As usual, several different options were presented for the Refinery worker. This time, the worker was reimagined as a sort of medieval scientist or chemist, seen tinkering with flasks of various substances. Option 2 was chosen, with the addition of the glasses from option 4.

Steel Mill

As one of the most industrial and modern looking buildings in Town Star, the Steel Mill needed a substantial makeover. Instead of keeping the striped towers that scream “industrial building,” it was decided to go with the second option, replacing everything with stone and wood.

The Steel Mill worker is the same versatile Factory Worker that comes with the Worker House and the Forklift, redesigned as pictured below for the Mirandus-Themed skins.

Worker House

Finally, we have the medieval Worker House, which has an especially authentic and unique feel. Notice that the roof didn’t get the same thatching attention as some of the others. We know the Factory Worker is incredibly busy, so it’s unlikely that he would have the time or energy to complete such a complex roofing process for his home. Instead, he has gone with a more quick and functional grass and mud approach.

Skin Pack 8 Now Available

While supplies last, you can now purchase Mirandus-Themed Skin Pack 8 in the Town Star store to receive all the above in-game skins. This pack also comes with Dragon Voucher 8/10. Collect all 10 Dragon Vouchers to unlock the Dragon Familiar in Mirandus, a valuable companion who will enhance your power and clout in the fantasy world of the upcoming game!

Be on the lookout later this week for the next issue of Behind the Skins, which will go back to the earlier packs with a look into Pack 2. Good luck on all your Town Star builds this week as the new competition begins!