What the hell is PixelSwarm?

I talked a little about PixelSwam in my last post, and I want to share an update. PixelSwarm is the pinnacle of social, collaborative, gamified art. SocialGameArtFi.

For the proof of concept, the game works like this. There is a map of pixels. Players pay a fraction of a PIZZA token to paint a pixel. Those tokens are sent to null; they are burned. The player who painted the pixel has their name on that pixel until someone else burns and paints it.

What Happened During the Test Last Week

PixelSwarm had a successful test last week. Twelve players bought at least one pixel. @nastyforce, @willendorfia, and @cpol competed for the title of Corner Controller. After painting over 105 pixels, @cpol has an untouchable lead for the PixelBoss title.

Here is how the board looks after the test:

Current PixelSwarm Mechanics

The test version of the game features three notable mechanics: dynamic map size, corner controller, and pixel boss.

Dynamic Map Size

When a new player joins the game and paints a pixel, the board grows by 1 row and 1 column. It started as 1 pixel and now has 11 rows and 11 columns.

One player asked if the board size was capped. Currently, there is no cap. The board can grow indefinitely. If there are so many players joining that the game needs Zoom In / Zoom Out buttons, that will be an excellent problem to have.

Corner Controller

When a player controls a majority of the corners of the map, they are dubbed the corner controller. This

PixelBoss

When players control the most pixels on the map, they are dubbed the pixelboss.

Future Ideas

I have a few ideas that would make this more compelling. I guess the main thing that would add value is a lot more players and/or a lot more viewers. Drawings could be a kind of giant digital billboard. A community can promote itself with a detailed drawing.

I envision a board for each Hive on-chain community. Each community could have its own part of the board, like community-focused land. For example, the AlientArtHive could draw in its own space and set its own rules. And the WOO game community could govern its part of the map. Community rules could define parameters like which tokens are spent, the minimum prices, who can paint, etc.

Another exciting mechanic would be increasing prices. Each time a pixel is painted, the price to paint could increase. Then it costs more to paint over an existing painting. Contested land would rise higher and higher. Maybe the most visible space is the most valuable?

Hexagons—Drawing hexagonal pixels instead of squares would be exciting for the game. This adds a lot more complexity and could be done during the front end's rewrite. There are some other examples of hexagonal pixel art that look unique.

Future Work - Odds and Ends

The front end needs to be completely rebuilt. It was hacked together from HTML, JS, and CSS, and it’s difficult to build upon.

Better notifications are needed. The game should notify the discord channel whenever the Corner Controller or PixelBoss changes.

The system can publish a daily snapshot of the map on-chain via short-form content like PeakD Snaps.

Lite account support. VSC lite accounts could be used to play the game. The game backend can watch for VSC transfer operations and update the game state based on those actions.

Ability to paint faster and smoother. Fewer keychain popups? Maybe the user can preload their painting balance and do rapid painting.

What else? What do you think we should add?
Is the game fun? What would make it more fun?

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