Aurory

Overview

Aurory is based on the story of a hero named Satoshi, who sought to find a world away from his homeland, Antik that was corrupted by power of the barons to establish a fairer standard using a decentralized financial system. Satoshi revealed a world called Tokané, which was filled full of magical creatures called Nefties. He used a device called a mintorc to create a unique Nefty called Helios and this would provide a portal between the two worlds.

Whilst fighting the barons, instability caused each new entry to Tokané to be its own individual shard called Vestiges of Power. After countless battles, Satoshi disappeared and left behind Helios who at this point forgotten who he was but now was your guide to an adventure through the magical world of Tokané, to restore Helios’ memory and free the people of Antik.

The lore has incredible detail and sets the ground for an exciting story, which can be expanded upon as each stage of the game is released. The detail and graphics style exhibited by the team shows that they are heading for a high definition, anime style world with multiple regions. Especially having a dedicated team of over 45 peoples hailing from triple A-game studios like Ubisoft, EA, and Bioware.

Gameplay

Currently there is limited playability in the open world part of Tokané, mainly in what’s called the Nexus allowing for teasers of what is to come. What is currently playable as a game is Aurory Tactics in which you play a 3v3 PvP battle mode using Nefties. All of this is playable on PC in browser requiring no downloads. Each player is set with 9 free to play Neftys made up of tanks, healers, mages and damage dealers. Each one having 4 special abilities and a passive ability with currently 8 out of the 9 Nefties that can also be owned as NFTs.

Each Nefty has the following stats: Health, Initiative, Attack, Defense, Ether Attack, Ether Defense, and Displacement. The free Nefties are all set of having these stats at 40% whereas the owned NFTs can have varied stats allowing for weaker and stronger Nefties that are free to play. This allows you to make a variety of teams that you can use to battle other Aurorians.

When you first load into Tactics, you are faced with a Tutorial, which explains the basics of the game, and how each ability consumes time and putting the battle on a timeline to visualise which Nefty has the next turn. This allows the player to play strategically and as some abilities consume more time than others. After completing the Tutorial, you are able to go into Multiplayer or Training mode. In the Training mode you will face AI controlled bots called FUDsafes allowing you to practice different Nefties. In Multiplayer mode you are loaded to a Battle Screen, which shows you the opponents ranking, and team composition and whether they are free to play or owned Neftys.

After the Battle screen, you will be loaded into a random map which contains 4 types of tiles, Bumper tiles, Hype tiles, Wall tiles and normal tiles. Each of these having their own use and making the player navigate using them. You are probably wondering what you get for winning these battles? In the current mode free to play Nefties earn $TOKE per victory and Nefties players own as NFTs earn $OKA.

Both of these are converted every Wednesday into the ecosystems main token $AURY. In the current stages, the reward pool of how much $AURY is paid out each week is maintained by the Aurory team and can change subject to the amount of people playing the game meaning that the supply of $AURY does not get too inflated. In addition to this, there is a leaderboard showing the top 100 players and in the last season the top 50 on this leaderboard gained a reward of $AURY whilst the top 3 were given special skins for their Neftys.

Review

Aurory Tactics quickly draws comparisons to HOMM3 mixed with League of Legends. The game is intuitive to play whilst carrying deep intricacies that allow it to stay interesting to veteran players. Although the game is well designed it does not come without its flaws as the match making system sometimes fails to match you with similarly ranked players and has been experiencing bugs with hot fixes happening once monthly on average. With the quite well detailed graphics it means that lower spec pc may struggle to run this game and there is no mobile functionality yet.

Aurory carries a limited amount of sound tracks meaning that after a while you may be inclined to turn this off however this and the sound effects can be switched off individually, the sound effects do add a nice touch inclining you to keep this on. Due to the easy to understand interface, you are likely to focus on the game rather than learning how to interact with it. As the game is in early phases there is an inclination for players to find a certain meta to rank up the leaderboard however monthly patches try to keep this in balance and this leaves the game to get stale in the last week as it comes to the patch as every seasoned player has figured out what works best within the game.

With this, there has been a series of bugs which have been noted but not worked on and there is two major downfalls of the tutorial where the use of the timeline is not well explained as well some of the extra commands e.g Overcharging not being explained. Overall I would rate this 7, as the game is fun for both beginners and more seasoned players with both having rewards which entices players to keep returning especially as this game remains fun as you climb the ladder. However as outlined above, the game has a considerable amount of bugs which need fixing as well as the Tutorial needing improvement to give new players a thorough understanding of the game.

The timeline could use further improvement by showing the players where their Nefty would end up depending on which special ability they use allowing for more strategical play as currently the end position on the timeline is not completely defined. This may confuse newer players as it may seem that the opponent is able to execute several turns compared to their singular turn albeit this being tactical play.

For players who are not used to web3 gaming, the term Nefty may be misunderstood when first playing as it is so close to NFT, however the sign up mechanics are suitable for non web3 users as no wallet is required to play the game and a social media, email or google account can be used for authentication purposes. Combining this with the free to play model that is viable of making the top 50 leaderboard, this allows for an easy onboarding without a significant barrier to achievement for those players.