Inside Solana Speedrun 🎮
Our Top 5 Picks from the first virtual Solana Game Jam
Solana Speedrun concluded on 30th July. There are 22 submissions competing for $25K in prizes.
It was Solana’s first virtual game jam, hosted by MagicBlock & LamportDAO. Teams had 120 hours to build a playable game that is either entirely on-chain or incorporates Solana in some meaningful way (e.g. on-chain assets, economy, etc).
A portion of the prizes & the submissions are being managed through Cubik. Community contributions will be matched from a pool that currently stands at $8K (1K USDC + 1M RAIN).
Congratulations to everyone who submitted a working game within the stipulated time frame. We playtested most of them and in this essay, we’ll present our Top 5 Picks & some general observations that might help future projects.
Our Top 5 Picks
We selected these based on whether they are, first and foremost, fun to play & then whether they integrate Solana meaningfully.
Disclaimer: This is a community-run blog, we’re neither official judges of this event nor are we suggesting that you buy any tokens or NFTs being sold by the games listed. This is purely our opinion on the quality of gameplay and not financial advice. We hope that if you like these games you play them or get inspired to build your own.
With that out of the way, here are our top 5 picks in no particular order.
Vinci World
A quiz that awards you points, levels & NFTs based on your performance. You can connect your wallet and start playing right away.
The questions range across a variety of topics including AI, History, Solana, and other trivia. Out of the ~10 questions I attempted, I did get a repeat once but that should be easy to fix if the game grows.
Our suggestions:
Allowing players to share their scores, streaks & creating more granular leaderboards could help drive both growth and retention.
Show some visual feedback while the answer is being evaluated, it looks like you need to press the upgrade button to submit your answer.
Require the wallet to be connected at the time of minting the NFT, not before a user starts playing the game.
If you enjoyed the game follow Vinci World on Twitter for more updates.
Doodle Devils
A side-scrolling game where you collect DOODLE coins while avoiding the obstacles coming your way.
The gameplay is fun & it’s nice to see the placeholder hoardings to inspire brands and generate future revenue. I’m not sure if the token is integrated into the game yet because I didn’t see any DOODLE coins in my wallet after I finished playing.
Our suggestions:
Allow people to start playing immediately without needing to connect a wallet.
Use cNFTs to create a composable record of gameplay.
If you enjoyed the game, follow Doodle Devils on Twitter for more updates.
Talisman
Shoot the mini monsters headed your way through the field. Your character and progress are stored as an NFT.
Our suggestions:
Simplify the onboarding. It feels cumbersome, especially creating the hero upfront even before we know what those attributes mean.
Iterate on the core gameplay by adding more types of fields, monsters, & weapons.
If you enjoyed the game, follow Sven on Twitter for more updates.
Solana Scroller
Another side-scrolling game where you avoid obstacles and outrun the villain following you. You can mint a record of your performance as an NFT.
The gameplay is intuitive & begins right away; you’re not required to connect a wallet or buy a token. The minting feature doesn’t currently work, I DM-d Chuckles to ask about it and apparently, it’s a UI bug that blocks the “add funds” step. Hopefully, they can fix it once the judging is completed.
Our suggestions:
Make the mint process gasless so even users new to Solana can claim a record of their performance.
Enable brands & users to feature their favorite NFTs as in-game skins or tools.
If you enjoyed the game, follow Chuckles on Twitter for more updates.
Last Dwarf of Solana
Designed around surviving a tech mine by taking down your enemies & upgrading your character.
The game can be played both as an xNFT or a website, which is a smart tactic for distribution and UX. A thoughtful touch is when you open the game as an xNFT it prompts you to quit, go full screen, and come back – this is important as the default window for Backpack today is the small extension window.
The description says that your NFTs appear as elements in the game, this is a cool idea but I didn’t notice it while playing. They have also balanced lore and gameplay pretty well, I found the surroundings intriguing and cool but wasn’t bored by a long story upfront.
Our Suggestions:
Integrate elements from the player’s wallet & sponsor brands
I personally would have preferred a little more guidance on gameplay, still haven’t been able to figure out how to score a point.
If you enjoyed the game, follow Kimo on Twitter for more updates.
General Observations & Feedback
The aim of this section is not to undermine any of the submissions. The teams were operating under time constraints and in new territory. Like we said at the start, hats off to everyone who built & submitted a working game within 5 days.
We hope this feedback is taken constructively and helps improve the quality of products in the ecosystem.
Introduce the core game loop ASAP.
When building a casual game get users to the core game as quickly as possible with the least amount of friction. Anshumani articulated this best in our Twitter space on game design, “casual games need to be easy to learn but hard to master”.
Far too many games had unnecessary obstacles before gameplay, such as
Requiring players to hold min amounts of SOL for gas fees. Instead, make your game gasless and cover costs through paid features or ads.
Excessive Lore. Some games went into great detail about the planet the game is set on, the story, etc. While storytelling is important, it can often get in the way of the game.
Sign-up flow. Asking users to log in with their social accounts or email before they play is avoidable friction. Do it later, when you have to because the stakes are higher, e.g. they’re claiming a reward.
Speed & Latency
Games need to feel fast. No one wants to play a game that lags just because it’s on-chain. As we’d laid out in our previous essay on Speedrun, you need to own this as the game dev – not the underlying blockchain, RPC provider, etc.
Pay to Play
A lot of games integrated a crypto payment or token burn upfront for the sake of it — before even introducing the core gameplay. This is likely to put off most users and lead to high drop-off rates.
A better way for standalone casual games is to introduce paid purchases and upgrades after users are familiar with and somewhat engaged with the gameplay.
Wishing all teams the very best for the results and beyond. Thanks to Shek & Anoushk for their help with testing out some of these games.
Cover Image by Sitesh.