CCP Games, the mastermind behind the popular Eve Online, made an exciting announcement on Thursday regarding their upcoming blockchain game. Originally known as Project Awakening, the game has now been rebranded as Eve Frontier. This survival-centric game is set to be a space simulation game built within the Ethereum ecosystem.
In an interview with Decrypt’s GG earlier this year, CCP Games founder and CEO, Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, described Eve Frontier as an on-chain game where players must work together to shape and expand the game world, or face dire consequences. The game will be built on Ethereum and will utilize Ethereum’s ERC-20 token standard. Additionally, it will be developed on Redstone, an Ethereum layer-2 network that is tailored for on-chain, autonomous game worlds.
Eve Frontier will introduce various crypto tokens, including an EVE Token and a LUX Token, which will be used for in-game transactions. Players and alliances will also have the ability to create their own currencies, with tokens serving as a way to reward and support developers who contribute to the game world.
The game is being developed using CCP’s Carbon game engine, which will be open source. It will also utilize MUD, an on-chain game engine developed by Lattice, a core contributor to Redstone. Players and developers will have the opportunity to program in-game functionality using Ethereum language Solidity through smart contracts and decentralized apps (dapps).
One of the key features of Eve Frontier is the concept of “Smart Assemblies,” where the core of the game world is created by the studio, and players can build on top of it as they see fit. This allows for enhanced base-building and greater moddability, with structures such as storage facilities, trading posts, and defenses being programmable to serve different functions.
The next closed beta playtest for Eve Frontier is scheduled for September 27, with founder access coming soon on PC and Mac. CCP Games had previously raised $40 million in funding for their blockchain initiatives in 2023, with a round led by VC giant Andreessen Horowitz.
Pétursson expressed excitement for Eve Frontier, stating, “Eve Frontier redefines the survival genre by fusing intense space survival gameplay with the limitless emergent potential of a player-driven, persistent sandbox universe. From exploiting space itself to shaping entire economies, every decision ripples across this dark and uncompromising expanse. We welcome you to join us in building this next step in our history; awake eternally.”