Next steps towards making Blockhunters reality

We know you haven’t been hearing much about Blockhunters over the past few months… but that doesn’t mean nothing happened! We went stealth and have many updates to share with all of you in this post. Since April (and since our last entry), we’ve been working behind the scenes on a lot of different aspects of the board game. Let’s cover them one by one in this big update!

• Gameplay and design
• Rulebook
• Playtesting
• Branding
• Promotion

Gameplay and design

A lot has changed since the previous version of Blockhunters! We were lucky to get a chance to consult with some professional game designers and experts in the industry. From these invaluable meetings we concluded that Blockhunters needed to be a bit more personal; it needed narratives and storylines, and would better succeed if we took a step away from the complexity that bitcoin automatically brings into the game.

Instead of focusing on “abstract” numbers, colors and math, the new gameplay “sells a dream” (words coming directly from a wise expert in the industry!). We ditched the colors, and introduced characters that players can identify with and learn from. 

“Purple” becomes Maria, a Filipino nurse residing in the US who uses Bitcoin to send remittances back to the Philippines, and puts more of her hard earned money into the hands of her loved ones. Can you make her the ultimate blockhunter?

“Blue” becomes Daniel from El Salvador, a young man making day to day payments in his country’s national currency and saving for his now bright future. “Yellow” is now the Garcia family from Venezuela, who are using bitcoin to fight hyperinflation. 

And many more!

All 10 colors are now characters from different countries with unique identities that correspond to real stories and illustrate actual bitcoin applications. Everyone who plays Blockhunters will understand the real value that bitcoin brings to people. It’s a tool and it can empower everyone on this planet! Which one do you want to be?

Note: as we’re still developing and finetuning the game, the names and details are still subject to changes.

Furthermore… In the previous version, all the components in the game were similar sized cards. The keys, transactions, nonces and power cards were all exactly the same (and were getting mixed up by our testing groups!). We changed this to make the gameplay much more intuitive!

• The key is now a big and rigid cardboard component
• The nonce is now a small number which you draw from a bag
• The transaction card remained the same size, but is now a character
• The gameplay around power cards is improved, making it more intuitive and fun

But the biggest change is probably the board itself. In the previous Blockhunters, all players made the blockchain together by connecting individual blocks, and by doing so creating a chain. While we did enjoy building the chain together, it took up a lot of surface area.

We listened to the feedback from our test groups and evolved this into a single board. It makes the game much more compact (as in: this version will actually fit on your kitchen table!) and an often heard bonus point: all players have a visual idea of when the game will end (as opposed to Risk or Monopoly that can keep going forever) which builds up tension towards the big reveal in Block 9 even more.

With fun new transaction cards, a smaller board and better distinctions between components, we are getting pretty excited about the direction Blockhunters is moving in!

Rulebook

The updated gameplay requires a new rulebook. We opened every single board game we had/could get our hands on and examined the manuals, concluding that all the information one needs to play Blockhunters could fit on a single page with the right wording. So we did it!

No book or booklet, but an efficient and clear one pager. We cut our eight (!) page manual down to one single page with all essentials. It’s so much better! Besides that, we know that a big proposition of Blockhunters is (secretly) education. We would never sacrifice this aspect of the game! 

There is SO much valuable information about Bitcoin that ties into the game, but is non-crucial to the gameplay. Instead of cutting it in the name of efficiency, we are introducing a kind of glossary, a 101 for extended learning. It is separate from the game directions (because let’s be honest: people just want to pick it up and start playing!) but serves as an extra learning element that goes in-depth about the real world situations from which the characters are inspired, and adds context about topics like scarcity, private keys, mining and other information which is frequently relevant in the game.

We are also considering linking this to a web resource, which we can easily keep up to date for those finding themselves still curious about bitcoin after the game has ended.

Playtesting

We finally played the NEW version of Blockhunters with our family, friends and even strangers – and we are relieved and excited to report that everyone enjoyed it! Those that played our older iterations praised the new one highly, conclusively categorizing it an improvement! Just look at those pictures and smiles.

Seeing our testers have a fun time was a huge win. But maybe even a bigger win was how they learned about bitcoin. New verbs were introduced, for example a player asked “Am I node-ing?” when verifying other people’s actions. Another player referred to the mempool as the “memory board with cards to remember”. We can truly say that people started to understand bitcoin while playing Blockhunters!

Are you curious how this looks? Follow our socials (Twitter, Nostr, Instagram, Telegram News, Telegram Community) to see more Blockhunters in the wild! And please send us a message if you want to playtest one of the next versions as well. Maybe we can make it happen!

Branding

As you can see from our new banner and profile picture, we have settled on the core aspects of the game enough to finally start to develop some branding! We are slowly designing all the individual components, and the look/ feel is starting to appear… In terms of overall visual style, Blockhunters will be a mix of futurism and retro cyberpunk, which will both honor the history of bitcoin and imagine the exciting future ahead. The basis is black cyberspace, with colorful blocks and cards floating in it, representing all the different characters and use cases.

Keep in mind that all pictures of the new gameplay here, while they do look updated from previous iterations, are not designed in our final branding! Graphic elements and illustrations are still being designed, and exact color schemes are still being determined, as we work closely with a printer/manufacturer on the specs.

Promotion

Finally, after being in stealth for too long, we will have much more to share with you. So please give us a follow on ALL our social media campaigns to help us to realize our dream to bring Blockhunters to your door:

• Twitter
• Nostr
• Instagram
• Telegram News
• Telegram Community

What’s next?

We’re about to start to focus on partners for printing and fulfillment of (pre)orders, while Emily continues to work on the design and branding, and of course we will continue to playtest every small iteration. We are building our own website and webshop, and will be becoming more and more active on our social media as we progress. But based on all feedback we dare to say: we’re close!

Thanks so much for your patience up to this point, as we’ve both been working other full time jobs and reserve Blockhunters for our free time. This is a passion project that we’re both incredibly inspired by and we can’t wait to share the progress as we get closer and closer to our goals!