Before we get into our update, we want to share a quick note: we discovered early in this process that independent board games are not exactly lucrative ventures. Substantial financial gains are not likely for us, but (believe it or not) profit has never been our primary motivation. Blockhunters is a profound passion endeavor and a labour of pure love. It’s a testament to the dedicated collaboration between two friends and a desire to spread bitcoin knowledge in a way that brings people together. To everyone who donated, playtested, or gave us a retweetーthank you so, SO much! We appreciate every sat of support we’ve received. We can’t wait to share our creation with you!  

So what’s new?

Just before Christmas, we received our new prototype, which we’ll call Blockhunters v0.9! Here are some of the recent improvements:

• We reduced the size of the board, making the game more compact
• We improved the storyline and faces of our ten characters
• We optimized the private keys and transaction cards
• We did a lot of work on the power cards. We made them more educational, and tweaked the balance of positive/negative/neutral cards to maximize excitement in the game!
• We received donated 3d printed coins

On the left you see the old prototype, on the right the new version!

Most importantly, this v0.9 is a result of the dozens of playtest sessions we’ve organized all over the world: in Canada, Kenya, the Netherlands, and El Salvador. We engaged in extensive discussions on gameplay with numerous bitcoiners, made plenty of tweaks and improvements, and brainstormed lots of creative concepts for inclusion in extension packages.

We can’t understate how incredibly valuable the feedback from the bitcoin community has been – we implemented a lot of your ideas. Oh, we also presented our game at Mi Primer Bitcoin’s unconference in November!

Let’s look at how the game actually looks like now as of today:

https://twitter.com/blockhunters_/status/1742243809860166044

We also worked on our website where we’re now set up to receive fiat donations and credit card pre-orders. Here, we’ve also started the knowledge base to support the storyline behind our characters. Check out two examples of the story behind Omar or Xin!

But they are just two of the ten characters. We have Omar, Hila, Zoey, Xin, Tolu, Anon, James, Diego, Garcia and Maria一each representing unique stories that illustrate some of the real life use cases for bitcoin. The characters teach players about hyperinflation, neocolonial currencies, surveillance, CBDCs, privacy, permissionless money, legal tender and saving hard earned pension funds. None of this information is required to know to play the game, but it’s an extra educational layer that is shared on our website, and is linked back to the physical word via a QR code.

This QR code lives on the fact sheet that we’ve started designing. It’s separate from the rules of the game so as not to overwhelm the players with too much information, but it adds an optional educational layer to the game and provides tons of external links and extra resources.

Blockhunters serves as a dual educational tool for understanding bitcoin; addressing both its technical workings and its social relevance. The factsheet does the same. On one side, you’ll find the social layer explained: who are these 10 characters and why are they using bitcoin? The other side draws parallels between bitcoin and Blockhunters on a technical layer. We explain the halvings, block time, number of private keys, etc.)

If you think you might like a copy, please consider pre-ordering our game here on our website or on Geyser! We hope to launch it in 2024 and every bit of (financial) support helps us to realize that goal!

So .. what’s next?

The upcoming weeks we will continue with our playtesting sessions. We finished several in The Netherlands (Zwolle, Amsterdam and Utrecht) already, but more are already planned! Come and join us in Arnhem (Feb 7), Rotterdam (Feb 12) and Zaandam (likely Feb 14) – so if you’re interested shoot us a message. Maybe you can playtest too!

We’ll also have our prototypes with us around the Atlantis Conference in Madeira in March. If you’re there, let us know! We’ll likely be playtesting it a lot! After these two months of playtesting, we will implement feedback. We feel very very close to making the last steps. The gameplay is set, only the rulebook and branding are undergoing changes at this point.

And then: Blockhunters v1.0 should be finished. So … Now we need you! As the launch approaches, each pre-order significantly contributes to us being able to manufacture this. The larger the sales, the cheaper we can make the game, and the faster we can orangepill the world! With a $100 pre-order you get:

– A copy of the very first Blockhunters game ever
– Unique merchandise
– An acknowledgment in the manual of the Blockhunters game (i.e. eternal glory)
– Free shipping once the game is finished
– A special place in our heart 🧡

Please consider supporting the Blockhunters dream! You can donate or pre-order on Geyser (bitcoin) or here our website (bitcoin, or credit card).

Until next time!

Arnold and Emily