The Bornless Alpha Deep Dive
Beta expected this quarter
Disclaimer:
I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advice and these opinions are my own. I’m just a dude that is a crypto gaming enthusiast and reads too many whitepapers. Additionally, for this project I own a couple of the 1st collection NFTs and have played the closed alpha test of the game, but of course that’s how I can bring this objective insight.
It’s worth mentioning Bornless NFTs are fully rendered and voice acted videos rather than your usual jpeg
What is The Bornless?
As always, if you don’t have 15-20 min there’s TLDR at the bottom. The Bornless is an upcoming blockchain game with NFT collections based on Ethereum that recently finished its closed alpha test. The game will be a free to play, lore heavy, horror, FPS that has a unique gameplay loop. 4 teams of 2 compete to be the last duo standing while also being hunted by a demon named Orobas. The in-game resource, incense, can be burned to ward off the demon who always hunts the team with the least incense burned. The same incense is spent for ammo and additional weapons so the players must make the decision between gear to fight other players or taking pressure off from the demon. The single active cauldron where players can burn incense changes locations periodically through the match to force player interaction. Incense will also double as an ERC20 token and be the single token for the game ecosystem. Lastly, every NFT will give players access to land gameplay called firms, more on that later.
A Humble Start and Tempered Expectations
Anyone that’s been in the NFT space for even a short time knows that when a project fails to sell out within 24 hours of the public sale it’s usually dead. When this happens projects are left with a bifurcation: burn supply or leave the mint open. The Bornless Collection 1 has a supply of 666 at a mint price of 0.0666 but Dec. 1st (mint day) only about 150 sold. The team decided to leave the mint open. Fast forward to Feb. 16th, the project suddenly finished its mint when it caught the eyes of some larger projects: Neo Tokyo, Llamaverse and Vulcan Forged to name a couple. That’s still only ~44eth which is a frankly small amount compared to other projects in the NFT space that have taken in 4 or 5 digits of ETH for basically nothing (looking at you, Pixelmon). With the first collection sold out the team continued to build the game and founded Cathedral Studios. Fast forward a little more and the team opened up the closed alpha test which capped off with an 8 person live streamed tournament that had a $2,000 prize pool.
The Closed Alpha Playtest
Lucky and active community members got access to the alpha version of The Bornless. I had the opportunity to play on builds 1.1.1 to 1.1.8. I also got to play in the alpha tournament as I won a raffle spot from a Neo Tokyo x Bornless AMA.
This was an alpha build so I’m not going to touch bugs but rather focus on game design. Although I will miss the anti-gravity lanterns. I want to emphasize again the gameplay loop being unique. The space is littered with projects that are copy-pastes of web2 games with tokenomics that will never advance the space. It appears to me the game draws inspiration from Hunt: Showdown, Escape from Tarkov and Rust but it’s not trying to be any of those things.
First thing, the lighting. The alpha was too dark. While it fit the aesthetic and lore it was a huge disadvantage to be holding a lantern because you were a literal beacon across the map. Additionally, if you had a decent Nvidia GPU you could simply crank the gamma and navigate without a lantern. For the shoutcasters of the tournament spectating someone like me, running around without a lantern, it was near impossible to discern what was happening. The team received a lot of this feedback and the beta will have a complete redesign of the lighting and scrap the lantern as a visual tool.
The demon, Orobas. It’s an ugly creepy f***er running around with several human heads hanging on its belt. Its AI in the alpha was weak, any experienced FPS player could learn to kite it around in a game or two. However, it’s very loud and visible so there still was real pressure of it hunting you because all the other duos knew where you were. While I liked this mechanic working this way, it made it so there was little interaction between the players and Orobas. It ultimately, would lead to getting killed by other players but if no one was in the area the pressure was negligible. I’m hoping in the beta to see the design shift more towards forcing players to interact with Orobas and broadening his AI so when a player firefight breaks out he will attack anyone in the area, creating some real chaos.
Revives and item depth. In the alpha, reviving your teammate was instant and there was no limit on the number of times you could. This of course led to some cheesy gameplay in firefights. It could be countered by just expecting duos to go for the instant revive and spray bullets over their partner’s downed body but it’s not good gameplay. This will 100% change in beta as it’s just common sense and likely the devs just hadn’t implemented a real revive system. The alpha had a knife, tommy gun, molotovs and dynamite as weapons. There of course wasn’t much depth to that gunplay but again there’s no world the team doesn’t expand upon that. The NFT collection has cleavers, pistols and axes as properties so it’s surefire we see those added and probably more.
Dopamine loop, it’s there. The ultimate test for any game, do you want to queue up for another match? Yes, is my answer for this. When playing in the alpha playtest I was paired up with total strangers yet every time we would be talking about things that went wrong or right in that match and how to adjust for the next game. Match wins are satisfying especially when the game goes down to the final cauldron which is locked in the catacombs forcing you, the other players and Orobas into small narrow corridors. The skeleton structure of this game lends itself to esports, multiple match meta gaming and entertaining spectating (with better lighting and maybe spectator cam wall hacks).
There’s definitely more I could write as this is a fully functional game but I think those are the noteworthy highlights.
Where is The Bornless and Where’s it Going?
The team at The Bornless formed a strategic partnership with Vulcan Forged, founded Cathedral Studios, at time of writing has expanded the dev team to about 17, and are building out their IP. Bornless Architect (Toby) mentioned in a recent AMA they’ve done no marketing and don’t plan to until they near full release of the game. Lastly, if the announcements in the discord are accurate we’ll see the closed beta in the next 2 weeks.
I haven’t covered the lore yet so I’ll touch on that quickly. There’s a lot, and it’s based on a demonology grimoire called “The Book of Solomon”. In fact, if you read the Opensea descriptions of Collection 1 in token numerical order, it tells a story about Harry and how he’s searching for his wife, Mary, who may be in possession of a cult of Orobas. They recently started a wiki as they build out their IP, if you feel like reading some demon bios. The team has stated some of the mintlist spots for collection 2 will be allocated via riddles, like they did for collection 1 so if you like the project, best brush up on your Bornless lore.
The Internal and Open Beta. We don’t know much about either yet. I assume the internal beta will expand to all Collection 1 holders and the open beta to partners or other communities. There’s been a lot of sneak peaks of the new map, new lighting, new character and new demon, Bael on their twitter. Tentatively, both will be this quarter so keep your eyes out. Whether or not Collection 2 will be released with the beta or full release of the game is unknown. We do know there will be 8 total collections all with a supply of 666 and each will feature a different in-game character. This setup seems to lend itself towards a seasonal game content design with each new collection bringing a new map, demon and character but that’s just me speculating.
The NFTs. I’m sure you’ve been wondering why I haven’t stated the utility of these especially when I stated it would be a free to play game. The answer to that utility is land/”firm” gameplay, where 1 NFT = 1 land. Similar to the hideout system in Escape from Tarkov, outside matches players will have access to their land, which they can spend incense to upgrade their firm. These firms will have a guild/clan aspect where multiple players can use and upgrade an NFT holder’s hideout to also gain the in-game perks. Incense will also be a ERC-20 token and thus these land upgrades will be a sink for the token. Nothing stated about it but I have to assume like the majority of blockchain games the incense token will mint on Ethereum but be ported to layer 2 due to gas fees. The details of the tokenomics and full functionality of the land gameplay aren’t public facing yet but this is what I’ve gathered from sneak peeks and an AMA done with Vulcan.
I intend to do a follow up deep dive on the beta of The Bornless.
If you liked this style of game review consider checking out my deep dive on Legends of Venari, a blockchain creature collection game.
If you want to discuss any crypto or blockchain game related stuff, usually best to find me on Twitter @OzoneNFT or drop a comment below.
Ozone, you’re just an overinvested idiot, where can I research this myself?
Agreed, you should always do your own research. Here's a bunch of links for you to do that.
The Bornless: Website Twitter Discord OS collection
TLDR
The Good
Will be free to play on full release allowing a capture of the web2 audience.
Unique gameplay loop with nuanced strategy rather than a copy pasta web2 game but with crypto.
FPS, mini battle royale style lends itself esports potential and a stronger chance at decent streaming metrics.
Land gameplay NFT designed with web3 guilds in mind. Free to play with paid premium gameplay and cosmetics are a proven monetization model.
Didn’t mint out on mint day but continued to build and finished mint after 2.5 months.
The Neutral
Small collection size and low mint price means the NFTs aren’t diluted and have a decent floor but the team only seeded themselves with ~44eth to start.
Haven’t done any marketing yet. Team plans to do so when game actually is near release.
Young and small team but with experience
Ethereum mainnet for NFTs and token with possible migration to layer 2
The Bad
Lackluster social media counts, many in the NFT space will judge a project on these numbers alone.
No tokenomics details yet released.
Simple whitepaper in need of an update after the alpha.