Wide Ambitions: What is BeraTone?

Introduction

BeraTone is a laid-back multiplayer game that blends elements from things like Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, and Friday Night Funkin'. In gamespeak:

“BeraTone is RPG-ifying Animal Crossing elements, wrapped in an MMO coat of paint, with fun rhythm minigames/’battles’ on top.” - BeraTone Founder PixelBera

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P29tNL8HS2Y

Blockchain gaming has just been so… so bad. This is one of the few things that both crypto natives and the mainstream public tend to agree on today. But why?

The Problem

Early attempts like DeFi Kingdoms weren’t even actual games, just gamified finance. Slapping a pixelated frontend onto a DeFi product isn’t fun, it’s just a cute way to lose money.

https://x.com/dystopiabreaker/status/1529171960508297216

The era of “play-to-earn” games like Axie Infinity at least tried to be games, but faced heavy inflation from excessive player rewards, yield for LPs, or vested unlocks. The result was predictable: more sellers than buyers, prices crash, and in-game economies start to fall apart.

Play-to-earn is a lazy take on crypto gaming where incentives are rarely well-designed. The sector got off on the wrong foot with this really grifty approach of making tokens the product, not games.

Trying to fix this, some games swung to the opposite extreme with hyper-financialized item economies. These require paying a lot upfront to play or keep playing, and while some try justifying high costs as “investments”, that still remains a big barrier to entry for the average gamer.

Today, “Web3 gaming’s not dead – just boring”. Standards are low, and bare minimum delivery is enough to secure millions in funding (as long as there’s a token). With little incentive to innovate, new releases are often low effort copy-pastes of popular Web2 games, lacking a genuine player community, unique gameplay, and good lore.

https://x.com/0xgodking/status/1669172538637799424

The Goal

The bar needs to be raised from where we can barely reach, and the tide is already turning with games like BeraTone putting core gameplay first. It totally abstracts any “onchain” or “crypto” elements away (think social logins, gas sponsorship, etc.) to make the game feel like… well, a game.

Instead of excessive token emissions seen with traditional play-to-earn, value largely comes from the worth of players’ items in a thriving game economy. This encourages organic growth; real gamers who make the economy, not extractive profit-seekers who break the economy.

BeraTone is free-to-play with a rich experience for all players. Master your favorite skills, tend to your personal farmstead, do quests and meet NPCs, play minigames, or soft-compete in regular leaderboard events.

https://x.com/BeratoneGame/status/1799183225308516388

BeraTone turns Berachain’s unique brand into a fun, immersive multiplayer experience. This gives BeraTone a built-in culture and audience, with wider ambitions to onboard a mainstream demographic through Berachain’s IP (a lot like PudgyWorld). With the magic of Berachain’s consensus, BeraTone can backstop incentives like player or LP rewards, thereby reducing its acquisition costs.

How Does it Work? Design and Aesthetics

The early initiative was led by PixelBera, game developer and artist behind all 2,355 NFTs in the official Berachain Bit Bears collection.

BeraTone was originally a full-2D pixel art game with Bit Bears as playable characters, but has since pivoted to a full-3D world where anyone can play. Bit Bear holders will still have the exclusive ability to play as either the 2D or 3D avatar in-game.

BeraTone is a “life-sim” played in 3rd-person. It features soft visuals, calm music, and a bunch of pleasant lands to explore: beaches, forests, meadows, mountains, deserts, and more.

Each open biome has its own unique weather cycles and natural events, where some resources and critters can only be found on certain islands during certain conditions.

You can extensively customize your in-game look on BeraTone, from your character to your cozy home. New cosmetics can be earned from quests or leveling up a class far enough, and these are tradable on the player market. Players can further personalize their space by crafting their own furniture and decor.

Crypto natives can look forward to easter egg traits that pay homage to popular crypto communities. It’s one subtle way BeraTone appeals to a Web3 userbase without compromising the game’s UX for regular players.

How Does it Work? MMORPG Gameplay

BeraTone’s MMORPG gameplay is about exploring, resource management, crafting, and social interactions. Players will have chat features and a friends list, as well as “ways to show off their achievements” in-game.

https://x.com/BeratoneGame/status/1780326766806278158

Every player gets their own plot of land that’s freely buildable and full of resources. You can navigate new waters on your personal steamboat, and each explorable island has its own “collectibles” for players to bring back home.

Gameplay revolves around class-based progression, adding a sense of challenge and mastery. Players can specialize in their own “thing” and earn XP in the skills they prefer. Each class has its own unlockable biomes, quests, abilities, tools, and resources, all of which have higher “tiers” as the class levels up.

Farming is a main facet of BeraTone’s core gameplay loop. Players can tend to crops, grow gardens with wild flora, raise livestock, and landscape their plots. There are over a dozen crops to unlock by leveling up the farming class, with higher tiers of soil, tools, and craftable items.

An entire niche of games is built around the simple joy of collecting stuff, so this will be another big aspect of BeraTone’s MMORPG. Players can build up an exotic collection of critters found in different world biomes, elevations, weather conditions, times of the day, or a mix of those, so only the most dedicated players will collect them all.

Quests are a key part of BeraTone’s gameplay too, presenting fun ways to earn coins, XP, and unique in-game items. The main questline provides guided progression with deep lore, along with NPC side quests to add “spontaneity” and give players more control over their storyline.

Basically there’s no one-size-fits-all gameplay, how you advance depends entirely on your play style. By throwing in multiplayer, BeraTone’s class-based gameplay gets even more fun and collaborative. You can progress with friends as masters of your own arts… or just chill and catch virtual salmon together.

How Does it Work? Rhythm Gameplay

BeraTone’s rhythm elements add an extra layer of fun and challenge to regular gameplay. This includes a Dance Dance Revolution-inspired minigame, daily rhythm challenges, and a “gig board” all for players to earn coins from.

This works in tandem with class-based progression. The fishing class for example, “players keep a steadily increasing beat” as they reel a fish closer. As you level up, you unlock more exotic fish and fishing areas (which comes with harder rhythm challenges).

Simply put, no one likes food with no seasoning. BeraTone’s subtle rhythm additions add just the right flavor to make gameplay much more dynamic and engaging overall.

Partnerships and Funding

BeraTone partnered with SpaceGnomeStudio in early 2023 to lead the pivot to full-3D art. More recently, BeraTone announced a partnership with Umeshu Lovers art studio to further develop animations and visual effects.

https://x.com/BeratoneGame/status/1798021583233249780

BeraTone was one of the earliest projects funded by the Berachain Foundation’s ecosystem incubator, raising $1 million to continue ongoing development. It raised another 295 ETH (currently worth $750k) from its public Sailcloth NFT mint.

One notable partner is The Honey Jar (THJ), the world-leading investable cult, scam, and ponzi. THJ’s main product, Honeycomb NFTs, serve to aggregate benefits from its dozens of native ecosystem partners. Although no actual dealsheet has been released yet, a Honeycomb stand was featured in BeraTone’s first official trailer.

Berachain excels in terms of branding, which seems ripe for mainstream adoption. Like Pudgy Penguins’ PudgyWorld, BeraTone aims to bring this IP to a broader mainstream audience by weaving a strong brand into a fun multiplayer game.

On that note, THJ hallucinated a few months ago what a BeraTone and Pudgy collab could look like. This would be a cool demonstration of game asset interoperability, allowing Beras and Pengus to travel between each others universes.

BeraTone also has some partners in the DeFi sphere, giving users ways to make their in-game assets more productive. The team confirmed “users will be able to access Berachain native dApps as well as partner protocols within the game”, so all users can leverage their assets’ value whether they’re Web3-savvy or not.

This is a cool sort of “meta-layer” extension for these DeFi protocols. Traditional DEXes or money markets can separately power BeraTone’s full-scale game economy because items (e.g., resources and special items) are tokenized like anything else.

Tokenomics and Player Economy

BeraTone’s player economy will use a two-token model, like “coins and gems”. Berachain’s gas token (BERA) is planned as the “gems” currency, while BeraTone’s native token TONE is the “coins” currency.

“Incentive trilemma is an incompatibility between the implementation of inflation, yield, and liquidity in the underlying economic architecture of the protocol or game.” - BIGA

For games, this refers to in-game inflation (player rewards), external yield (LP rewards) and the architecture of the overall player economy. By strategically integrating PoL in the background, BeraTone stands out from other Web3 games in its ability to address the “incentive trilemma”.

The team has vaguely mentioned their intentions to use a consistent inflow of BGT emissions to bootstrap incentives for players. Since BERA is planned as the “gems” currency, this seems likely to involve the 1:1 BGT conversion mechanism. Those emissions can also help attract sticky liquidity for TONE pools.

Earlier this year, BeraTone held a public auction for its Founder’s Sailcloth NFT. Holders will enjoy in-game benefits like:

• extra inventory space

• stat upgrades and XP buffs

• lower marketplace fees

• cheaper home relocation

Holders also qualify for free lottery entries, free item drops, and an edge in the future play-to-airdrop campaign. More importantly, the Founder’s Sailcloth is the “Bong Bears-equivalent” NFT for BeraTone, suggesting holders may receive free rebases of future BeraTone collections.

Conclusion

Official launch is slated for 2025, but Sailcloth NFT holders will get early access to the first playable demo expected in the coming weeks, or “by the time Berachain mainnet is ready”. BeraTone isn’t reinventing the wheel, just making it more fun to spin. It’s reminding us that crypto games don’t have to suck, that less is more.

And most importantly that no, Berachain isn’t just a DeFi chain… it’s a canvas for building anything that pairs with PoL. Berachain is an eccentric part of what’s already the most eccentric corner of the Internet: this godforsaken industry.

https://x.com/divine_economy/status/1790453672385695944

BeraTone bundles all of that up and makes it playable with friends, a literal Infinite Economic Game. It doesn’t feel forced or over-engineered, it just works, and BeraTone knows best that sometimes the greatest things come naturally.

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DISCLOSURE: I hold 2 Founder’s Sailcloth NFTs. I have not been compensated in any way for this article, and I was not asked to write this article. The information provided in this article is solely for educational purposes and should not be considered as financial advice. The views expressed in this article are my own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any company or organization. Linked references are not endorsements. Readers should always conduct their own research and seek professional advice before making any financial decisions.