“Right,” Holden said. “No coffee. This is a terrible, terrible planet.”
James S.A. Corey
Part I: Regeneration
Let’s imagine a world, a world of charred ground and blazed Earth. The air polluted with the decrepit stench of soot and sulfur dioxide. Lining the abandoned roads are nothing but ancient bottles of Ouzo; boxes of medals and photographs of long-since-executed warehouse guards; paper planes made from Pravda newspapers, their headlines reading asinine twaddle. An old VHS tape lays in a hole, its images so worn with time that, if played, only audiovisual reminders of psychedelic hallucinations would appear on the screen. But there are no more screens here in this world… Is it safe to say it’s doomed? Not fit for purpose, surely? Not welcoming, of course, but must it stay inhospitable? This is the premise of Die Last: A game where all players together regenerate the ecosystem of a decaying world through teamwork, subterfuge, cunning, and strategy.
Here is another definition: Die Last — the validator game announced at GOSH’s unveiling of Acki Nacki — is a massively multiplayer online real-time strategy game, run entirely on-chain. We repeat, run entirely on-chain.
So how is it a Validator game? Well, these function, as we all know, as calls to provide hardware to showcase just what a new blockchain can do, as well as debugging and safety checks. And this is exactly the case here, only with Die Last this showcase is less running numbers and more running avatars in numbers across graphic digital landscapes. We’ve spoken at length about Acki Nacki in terms of statistics; speed, security, it being free-to-use. But we feel it's time to illustrate what Acki Nacki can do beyond theory, beyond formal mathematics, and, above all, highlight this blockchain’s potential to achieve what no other blockchain ever has.
Die Last is an MMORTS game focused entirely on the concept of regeneration; to take a decaying landscape and imbue it with new life. There are many challenges in running this concept on-chain, not least of which is that every action has to be instantly executable, while there could be hundreds, thousands, or even tens and tens of thousands of these actions being executed at any given moment, all the time. But if all this is possible, factors like parallel execution, extremely fast transaction speed with high throughput, and guarantees of the network’s security, mean it’s possible on Acki Nacki, and on Acki Nacki alone.
You might now be wondering what these actions even are, how this game works, and what is in store for players. With this we present:
Part II: How To Play Die Last
“The creation of a single world comes from a huge number of fragments and chaos.”
Hayao Miyazaki
As we’ve mentioned, Die Last challenges you to regenerate the planet, harness renewable resources, and safeguard your economic interests and life. Players have the opportunity to dive into two pivotal roles: become a Block Producer, managing your very own Acki Nacki hardware server, or step into the shoes of a Block Keeper, engaging in the thrilling day-to-day gameplay. By forming guilds, Block Producers and Keepers unite their strengths to secure and defend resources from rival guilds, making every decision count.
Trees are a giver of life. Life in the game is called Karma, the unit by which every action is measured, and which allows any move to be taken. Without Karma, players will be unable to do anything, and the more Karma you have, the more you can maneuver. Karma is produced by the trees Block Keepers plant, which allows them to earn Karma and revive the ground that turned vile after the old order poisoned it; as well as by the only remaining working mechanism on Earth left from the industrial era — called DOGMA, the old, barely working producer of Blocks which contains small amounts of Karma. Every move you make, every action you take, costs Karma. The larger your Forest, the more Karma you will receive.
As you wander, you will find Lost Objects from the old order. These are the ancient artifacts we mentioned at the beginning, but also things like an old left footed boot, a slice of huckleberry pie, a tracking device, sage, an NFT which lost its value, and many, many more. Use them to craft cryptic messages. The messages you send and receive can give special powers, offer unexpected opportunities, or devastate you or another player with their cruelty.
While playing you also create DeBots, your trusted companions. Design them yourself with different properties, and they will give you the power to build, defend yourself, or attack and steal another player’s Karma. Any player can also buy a Spy DeBot for 1 mission. It will allow you to spy on your competitors, give you analytics about other players and Guilds, and, if you have enough, you get real time notifications about the game, and the ability to kill another Spy DeBot. The catch? Other players may know you’re spying on them… If they have Spies of their own.
Build Pipes to transport Karma. Connect Pipes to a Forest or a Factory, and give yourself the power to go off to wander to where no man has gone before. Wherever you go, your pipes will also transport your DeBots. But be warned, any player can attack any pipe they see and steal the Karma with the help of a DeBot. But you also have to use pipes to transport stolen Karma. This is why every decision you make has to be strategic — defend yourself from other players' attacks by watching out for pipes going in your direction.
You can always join a Guild to earn a steady supply of Karma. They are alliances of players that run abandoned Factories producing blocks of Karma. Other Guilds might try to attack you. . You can write a letter to any other player or Guild. If you step into the same square, or wander into a Forest or a Building, a chat will open up allowing you to instantly talk with another player. If you’re not one for conforming, you can go Rogue; be a player that’s not a part of any Guild. You wander with their best friend — your Dog — and battle and steal other players' Karma, and survive any which way you can, growing stronger with each successful fight.
The name Die Last refers to Tournaments — periodically organized bouts between Guilds where the aim is to beat opponents, with skill and speed, in in-game arenas that are constrained in size. The arenas where Tournaments happen are in Zones that are always far away and randomly selected. And Tournaments are lucrative, with the winners earning massive quantities of Karma from the Prize Pool.
And you must, of course, prepare yourself for Acki Nacki, dangerous creatures with sharp teeth, which will attack random players at random times, and fight them for Karma.
Part III: Before Dogma, Oxygen Ruled
During the Carboniferous period, some 350 million years ago, the Earth’s oxygen levels reached to be around 30% of the atmosphere, significantly higher than the 21% of today. This, of course, means multitudes of vast differences in the biosphere between then and now, one of which is the presence of enormous insects. By enormous we mean dragonflies 1m15cm in size, millipedes 2m50cm in length, scorpions half a meter in height. Ok, you get the idea, we’ll stop. The reason for these giant bugs is that with much higher oxygen levels, they could keep growing to unreasonable proportions while keeping their energy needs met. And while this sounds like the plot of a Spielberg movie never shown because it was just too terrifying, it also perfectly shows both the potential, and the eventual limitations of scale.
Acki Nacki is a malleable network, it self-adjusts according to the state of the blocks. It changes speed to ensure security, and it goes from hard to soft, and can scale, in theory, as much as the totality of global computing power in the world allows. And so, like the plants and insects that grew to be enormous due to a surplus of oxygen, Acki Nacki, more than any other blockchain, can maximize the potential of the current surplus of computing power.
But what Acki Nacki cannot do, even if it were to become a sensation, is be a catalyst for the threat currently posed to the global biosphere by emissions and ecosystem destruction. This is because the entire economy of the Die Last Validator Game revolves around Carbon and Biodiversity credits, each one denoting an action taken to preserve and regenerate our real world, the planet Earth.
“The Holy Land is everywhere”
Black Elk
We have an interest in not keeping computing power growing indefinitely. The interest is our very existence; not to die out like prehistoric creatures that strike terror into future lifeforms. As any ecologist will concur, some semblance of balance must exist in any ecosystem in order for it to survive. And likewise, this balance must be mimicked by any and all economic actors in order to not be consumed by pollution in the interests of profit margins. But if profit margins run the world (and they do run the world) then maybe the answer lies in making the diminishing of pollution beneficial for profit itself.
Part III: Validation & DAOs
The framework for Carbon and Biodiversity credits involves Die Last being used by gamers, as well as developers, as a vehicle for raising attention about biodiversity and emissions, as well as economic and political freedom, to invite responsible economic actors to join the game and build their governance within Die Last, which matches their in-game consumption and emissions with real biodiversity credits. These credits subsidize the emissions of Block Producers’ computing power, something never before attempted. Moreover, this allows for in-game land owners to receive rent payments on buildings on top of ESG credits. Die Last also allows for validation of in-game items on-chain via 3rd party clients.
The point about in-game governance is, of course, of essence to GOSH. Die Last will also double as a space for DAOs to run activities and office work inside the metaverse. DAOs will be able to use buildings in the world of Die Last, and so participate in a sort of real estate market; as well as in biodiversity efforts through forest leasing for DAO headquarters (it is mandatory to have a certain parcel of forest to build DAO in Die Last).
“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Part IV: Conclusion
This unique game on the Acki Nacki network is launching exclusively on the Steam gaming platform. While the game is set to grace various distribution targets via the leading Steam Platform, it adheres to Steam's License terms by excluding in-game blockchain content. However, the door to Web3 content remains open through 3rd-party clients sparked by the creativity at the Acki Nacki Underworld Computer Hackathon. Get ready to mark your calendars and dive into a world where strategy and sustainability collide. The game's Steam page is just a click away: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2872100/DIE_LAST/?beta=1
For all the latest updates and release announcements, make sure to add it to your Steam Wishlists.
And for more news and updates on Die Last: