In the previous post, I wrote about how a horse-racing idea gradually turned into a game about fictional creatures, breeding, lineage, and racing:
What Kind of Game Makes History and Inheritance Matter?
The provisional name for the project is EvoWild Run.
At this point, the basic form I had in mind was:
- fictional Creatures
- individual differences between them
- raising and training
- breeding
- traits passed from parents to offspring
- bloodlines that develop across generations
- racing those Creatures
None of those mechanics are new by themselves.
Breeding games, horse-racing games, and raising games have been doing similar things for a long time.
So from here, the question became less about trying to invent a completely new mechanic and more about gradually deciding:
What kind of game should EvoWild Run actually be?
It is a Blockchain Game, but I am not starting with Tokens or NFTs
EvoWild Run originally came from me thinking about a more basic question:
What actually makes something a Blockchain Game?
Because of that, there are several things I decided from the beginning.
Connecting a wallet will not be required to participate in the game.
There will be no game-specific Token.
Creatures will not be issued as NFTs.
Play-to-Earn will not be the purpose of the game.
That does not mean I have decided not to use Blockchain.
It is almost the opposite.
The experiment is:
Can Blockchain have a meaningful role in a game even when the game is not built around Tokens, NFTs, or Play-to-Earn?
At least for now, I do not want the game to revolve around selling Creatures as NFTs and trading them.
I also do not want players to need a wallet just to start playing.
What I am currently thinking about is whether Blockchain could be connected to things that are meant to persist over time, such as Creature history, bloodlines, and later, Course history.
But I still do not have an answer to the question:
Does this game actually require Blockchain?
That is still part of the experiment.
A Creature is not completely determined at birth
One of the central ideas is that Creatures change across generations.
The rough cycle is:
Genetic information → abilities and traits of an individual → race results → choosing the next parents → the next generation
Traits from the parents affect the next generation.
A Creature is born.
The player raises it.
It races.
The player looks at the result and decides which individuals should become the next parents.
Then another generation begins.
That cycle repeats.
But I do not want the game to become:
Find the individuals with the highest numbers, breed them together, and repeat.
If that happens, the game eventually becomes a search for one universal optimum.
That made the race side of the game more important.
I still have not decided exactly what kinds of races there will be
This part is still open.
I have not decided on a fixed list such as:
- sprint races
- endurance races
- obstacle races
or anything like that.
What I have decided is that I do not want the same type of Creature to be optimal in every race.
Race conditions could differ in things such as:
- total distance
- Course width
- corner sharpness
- length of straights
- elevation changes
- surface
- number of corners
- bottlenecks
- weather
- surrounding environment
For example, a long straight might make top speed more important.
A Course with many sharp corners might favor different abilities.
Large elevation changes might make climbing ability or endurance more important.
A narrow section might make positioning matter instead of pure speed.
Mud, sand, snow, and other surfaces could make different types of aptitude important.
The goal is not:
One Creature is strongest everywhere.
It is closer to:
A Creature may be strong under one set of conditions, but not under another.
If the Course changes, breeding direction can change too
This made the Course itself important.
The rough idea is:
Course conditions → different abilities and traits become advantageous → race results change → different parents are selected → bloodlines develop in different directions
For example, if Creatures compete for many generations on Courses with tight corners, players may start breeding bloodlines that perform well under those conditions.
A Course dominated by long straights could push breeding in a different direction.
Mud or snow could make traits that were previously unimportant suddenly valuable.
So even if the basic game is still about raising and breeding Creatures, changing the competition environment can change what players consider a "good" individual.
Then maybe players should be able to create Courses too
From there, I started wondering whether Courses need to be fixed by the game at all.
So I added the idea of letting players create race Courses themselves.
The current idea is not unrestricted 3D creation.
It would start with a modular system using predefined Course parts.
For example:
- Straight
- Left Curve
- Right Curve
- Uphill
- Downhill
- Narrow
- Wide
- Bridge
- Tunnel
- Mud
- Sand
- Grass
- Rock
- Snow
Players could combine them into something like:
Straight → sharp curve → uphill → mud section → long straight
A Course Builder itself is not a new idea.
Games have had course editors for a long time.
What matters for EvoWild Run is that a player-created Course would not just be scenery or a playground.
It could become part of the competitive environment that influences breeding.
A player could breed a Creature for an existing Course.
But they could also create an environment designed to test a particular Creature or bloodline.
Then another player might breed a completely different bloodline that performs better on that Course.
If that happens, history starts to exist on the Course side as well as the Creature side.
Who created the Course?
When was it created?
What races were held there?
Which Creature holds the record?
Those kinds of histories may also become part of the game.
Current game structure
This is the current system diagram.
It is not a final architecture.
It is simply a snapshot of the design at this point in development.
View the current live design:
EvoWild Run — Game Structure v0.1 on Whimsical
The diagram itself will probably change as more parts of the game are decided.
I plan to keep updating it as part of the actual design process.
The game is still far from fully defined
Right now, EvoWild Run is moving toward a structure where players:
raise Creatures
breed across generations
test them under different race conditions
use race results to influence future breeding
and eventually create competitive environments themselves
But many things are still undecided.
What kinds of races will actually exist?
How much can raising change a Creature?
Where is the boundary between inherited traits and development through training?
What does the player actually do during a race?
What should be recorded on Blockchain, and what should remain in a normal database?
The project is still at the concept stage, so these things may change.
But the starting idea has not changed:
Do not start by building a game around Tokens and NFTs.
Build the game first, then find out whether Blockchain has a meaningful reason to exist inside it.
That is still where EvoWild Run is starting from.
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