Today I’m chatting with Xavier Moore of Enigma Games, an indie game house that is one of the latest recruits to join the growing list of Enjin powered blockchain games. They’re currently in development of a game called Shield of Shalwend. I don’t know much about this one (it’s starting to get hard to keep up with the constant flow developing on Enjin’s Blockchain Gaming Solution!) so it’ll be great to learn more and hopefully help share with the blockchain gaming fans what this project is about and wanting to achieve. Let’s unravel this Enigma 🙂
But first…the giveaway! Naturally we will again be giving away 10 eGamers / Meltelbrot tokens to the first 10 who retweet this article on Meltelbrot twitter. But more exciting is that Xavier is providing 10 rare versions of the Shield of Shalwend collectible items with 10 ENJ backing each. All who retweet and add their ETH/ENJ Collectible address have a chance to win, and what’s cool about this, is that it will be the first time anyone will receive a Shield of Shalwend collectible. So retweet to win! Good luck and let’s get into it.
Thanks Xavier for this opportunity to learn more about what you’re up to. To get things rolling as I always ask – what’s your background in gaming and/or game development?
First of all thanks for the opportunity! I have been a game designer for as long as I can remember. I started very young by creating paper and dice games and eventually moving on to developing software. I have been in the industry for 19 years now as an indie developer and have designed games for nearly every platform (outside of consoles).
Your game house Enigma Games, has a few projects from what I’ve seen of your website, can you fill us in on what you’re developing for the gaming world?
Story time! From 2008 to 2014 our most popular game was a social browser rpg, Wargods Online. We mainly focused all of our development creating new content and features for it. After MySpace died off and Facebook stopped promoting gaming, the platform dried up for Wargods Online. During that time we built a few game concepts that started to get full attention so we launched a few mobile games.
Now that we are focusing on Enjin integrations, a few more of those game concepts will finally come to life. We completely revamped Shield of Shalwend that will be launching on Steam shortly. We also plan on integrating Enjin into a few smaller games like Min-Mins and Theta Warriors Defense, before again focusing all of our attention on the ambitious Wargods Online sequel.
I’m always interested in where names come from, why the name Enigma Games?
This goes back to the college days when me and two friends were experimenting with building our own 3D game engine. We were always in the back of the class having “business meetings” but still managed to ace all of the exams. The professor became curious and asked us to share our code with the class. I was always a class clown so I shared some of the Assembly (nearly unreadable to newbies) code. That was when the professor said “Always the Enigma Mr Moore” and the name stuck.
Not anymore Mr. Moore ha! The two games being currently integrated with Enjin are Shield of Shalwend, and Min-mins, can you tell us more about the gameplay for both?
Shield of Shalwend is a top down arcade brawler. The player takes control of the main character, Shalwend, and fights off a horde of elves. Progressing through the levels unlocks new weapons to use in progressively harder waves. Ranks are earned in the game based on kills and each rank is backed by Enjin.
We also have added support for the Multiverse with the Stormwall shield and Forgehammer. Thanks to the Enjin team, we have a limited amount of multiverse items that have a small chance to drop during the game!
Min-Mins is a 2D strategy mobile game that is similar to the board game mechanics of Battleship. Players collect min-mins that each have a unique attack pattern that can be deployed in enemy territory. Enjin backed items will be randomly available during gameplay and multiverse support is currently being designed.
How do you intend to integrate the Enjin blockchain gaming solution into these games?
I touched on the individual game designs earlier so here is our master plan! Currently we are designing our games to be linked to the Enigma website.
Basically one login for all games similar to Steam. This is how we plan to rebuild our community and have more interaction with our gamers.
Achievements in games also show up on player profiles on the website for example. Now that we have the power of Enjin behind us, we are able to add interesting cross-game events and share our universe with other games through multiverse items.
I’ve noticed on telegram that you are very open in speaking to your community about ideas for your games. This makes sense as there is a lot of knowledge within the community. Has any of the ideas gained traction, if so, do you mind sharing one you’ll be implementing?
Yes of course! We value the opinions of expert gamers. Our success with Wargods Online was mainly due to the constant interactions with the community. During our beta test of Shield of Shalwend over 100 players gave us feedback for improvements in the game.
One example is that we added Enjin backing to the ranks to add replay value.
On your website, I noticed a list outlining your team. Can you tell us about the team behind Enigma Games?
Our team has changed so much over the years. I believe that a dev team should always be excited about the project they are working on. So the number usually ranged between 3 to 8 depending on how many think the current game is a fun idea.
We also hire our expert gamers as advisers. So anyone consistently giving great feedback has an opportunity to benefit from our success.
With Enjin integration, naturally there’ll be ENJ backed items which garner a lot of interest from the Enjin community as a whole. What items will be available and what will the functionality be?
To help with this part of the ecosystem, we have a created a separate mini-game for players to earn our Founder Tokens. After realizing that there is a segment of the community that is more interested in the Enjin backed items than the games, we decided to use this opportunity to showcase all of our game characters.
This month we will be launching our Enigma Games Collection mini-game on the website that allows the community to fill their wallets with Enigma themed items and earn Founder Tokens to all of our games.
Most of the Enjin powered games use the ecosystem to help with funding the development of their game, do you intend to crowdfund? If so, what can we expect? An MFT perhaps?
We are a self funded team so we have a different approach to game development. Which is why our slogan is “Games that Change the Game”. I would say that we are idea-funded. We are always experimenting with designs and mechanics.
Gamers have great ideas and we have a great team of developers that are capable of implementing them. The Enjin ecosystem will be mainly used to boost our marketing and exposure initially. We do have MFTs planned for each game that offer benefits and ENJ value.
Does anyone have any of your items yet?
Not yet, but we are giving everyone that helped test – a free box!
Love the recognition of others work! How are you finding the Enjin support for your game development?
The support is great! We have integrated our games into a lot of platforms over the years and the Enjin team are by far the best.
With all things in development, games included, there’s always many obstacles on an unknown path. How will your team ensure that the games will definitely be released for your supporters to play?
We have two things that help us conquer obstacles. First, every project has only the team members that are excited about the game. Second, we give salary bonuses to the team when the game is launched. Third, if all else fails I usually jump in and drag the project across the finish line!
Good to know! Is there anything else you’d like to share with the readers today?
Our previous community was nearly destroyed with the collapse of Facebook gaming. We are working to rebuild bigger and better this time around. Visit our telegram or discord channels and tell us your dream game and awesome ideas.
Thanks for the great questions. Hopefully the answers make us less of an Enigma to the community! 😉
From what you’ve said, you’re definitely now building for a solid community with Enjin integration, and the Enjin community is way cooler than Facebook ha. If you know how to build, you can build again anywhere yeah 🙂 Thanks for chatting and letting us get to know you better, but with an Enigma I’m sure there’s always more to learn! If others want to keep up with what Xavier is developing in Enigma Games and The Sword of Shalwend and more…or should I say moore ha. Please follow the links below. Melt out.
