Dark Country is a veteran of the WAX blockchain gaming space, predating many of the more famous projects. To me, it’s heavily underrated and its day in the sun is still to come. Unlike many blockchain games, it feels like a fully fleshed-out concept, with deep lore, beautiful art, and a clear and coherent vision of what’s to come. Now, Dark Country has updated its roadmap and it’s worth a closer look.
What Is Dark Country?
At the heart of it, Dark Country is a trading card game on the WAX and Flow blockchain with a fantasy, gothic Western aesthetic. It is still in alpha testing at the moment — albeit available in early access to those interested — and it is headed for a big six months.
The reason I say “at the heart of it” is because Dark Country has more about it than most traditional TCGs and their latest roadmap shows exactly that. They have already boasted over $1m in secondary market volume and over 50,000 rounds of PvP, but that could well be dwarfed by what’s to come.
Between now and July this year, Dark Country will become Play to Earn (P2E), introduce weekly tournaments, add ownable land, add staking of resources, implement alliances between landowners and wars between alliances, offer PvE and roguelike adventure campaigns, crafting, and far more.
It’s difficult to imagine just how they will manage to release an entire game’s worth of features, but it looks as if they will. I recommend reading through their announcement post to see just how much I haven’t mentioned.
One foundational feature of everything going forward is the Shadow Dimes ($SDM) token being launched which will enable P2E gameplay, but also incentivize peripheral gameplay loops. The token is intrinsically linked with the implementation of land, which in itself is more complex than most games’ uses of NFT land. Landowners being able to band together in alliances and then declare war on other alliances could lead to some incredible, meta gameplay.
Closing Thoughts
TCGs utilizing blockchain technology have become commonplace and for good reason: collectibles, pack openings, and self-contained gameplay without the need for the intrusive signing of transactions. TCGs could scarcely be a better fit for blockchain technology, particularly in the foetal state that blockchain gaming is still in.
I had scheduled some time to cover Dark Country for our Blockchain Gaming Watch series, but after seeing what’s to come, I’m going to delay for a few months to get a better picture of what the completed project will look like.
The next six months will set the trajectory for Dark Country’s future and should they meet the markers they have set themselves, it’s difficult to imagine they aren’t in the conversation of the best blockchain games available.
