Moonfrost - I Finally Understand the Blockchain
Moonfrost is very pretty. The galaxy colour palette of purples, blues, and teals creates a magical vibe, accentuated by the sparkly effects and rainy reflections. Exploring beautiful isometric environments while listening to the relaxing lo-fi music and collecting resources feels like the beginning of a promising game loop.
But for now, Moonfrost is still being alpha-tested by players and the loop is a bit repetitive. You run around gathering wood, stone, and other resources while waiting for your crops to grow in real time. You harvest crops to sell for the in-game currency—SIL—and then use this in combination with your resources to build structures. Moonfrost has blueprints you can collect and a dedicated ‘Build Mode’ for positioning those items in the environment. You can also place walls and floors in this mode—but I learned the hard way that demolishing these structures doesn’t refund your resources, and I am too indecisive to lose 60 softwood every time I want to move a wall.
Despite being in alpha, Moonfrost has heaps of options for furniture and other decorative items, which is promising for people who love the building aspects of life sims. It makes sense that Moonfrost has prioritised its visual elements and item selection—this game needs to appeal to its audience artistically if its Web3 elements are going to be successful.
If you’re not familiar, Web3 is supposed to be the ‘new internet’, where blockchain technology will be used to make every individual responsible for their own data, rather than letting that data be owned by large companies like Google or Facebook. Concepts like decentralisation, cryptocurrency, and token economics are all part of the Web3 vision. If you’re the sort of person whose brain switches off when you hear words like ‘blockchain’ and ‘NFTs’, don’t worry—I can relate. I’ve done a lot of research as part of writing this review (my algorithms are ruined) and I’ll do my best to explain as we go.
Oxalis Games—the developers of Moonfrost—haven’t shared all of the specific Web3 elements they plan to use yet, but we know it will relate to ‘FROST’ tokens. Players will be able to collect FROST in-game, as well as acquire and trade NFTs for real-world profit. So this partially explains why the artwork is so pretty: if they are going to let you buy and sell in-game items, it will help if those items look exciting enough to be worth trading.
Although FROST and NFTs are not in the current alpha build of Moonfrost, using blockchain has always been a technical consideration for the game. Oxalis Games writes about it in their devlogs on Medium—although their content has become less about blockchain technology over time. Their marketing overall has followed this same approach: in 2021 their website listed the game’s use of crypto tokens front and centre, but their website now focuses solely on gameplay. The primary clue about Moonfrost‘s Web3 elements these days is their investors list, which features a few major crypto game investment firms—including Pantera, who are the ‘first U.S. institutional asset manager focused exclusively on blockchain technology’.
People on the subreddit r/CozyGamers have suggested that Moonfrost ‘hiding’ their use of blockchain behind a few clicks on their website is a red flag, ‘predatory’ or ‘scummy’. Oxalis Games has written that it’s actually because it thinks the technology that the game uses—blockchain or otherwise—doesn’t matter to the average player: ‘To the user, whatever tech is under the hood is not relevant. They just want to play the game, they don’t care about the tech, and that’s how it should be.’
The reality is probably somewhere inbetween. Oxalis Games has made a strategic choice to stop putting their use of blockchain on the homepage of their website because they know this can be an immediate turn-off for a lot of users and they want to reach a broader audience. It’s a bit manipulative, but all marketing is. And when major games media either treat blockchain games with immediate scepticism or refuse to cover games that use blockchain technology entirely, I understand why a crypto game might want to make it slightly harder to recognise that that’s what you’re playing.
But what is a blockchain, and why do some people seem to hate them so much? Oxalis Games describes a blockchain as simply ‘a type of database’. These databases can track information like ownership and transactions, but they differ from other database systems because they are managed by multiple people and update in real-time, supposedly making it more difficult for one individual to manipulate its contents. Early blockchain advocates heralded this technology as one that would revolutionise the internet with its trust and transparency.
The first blockchain technology that became widely known was Bitcoin. This cryptocurrency has been associated with scams, criminal activity, and negative environmental impacts. The anonymity (or pseudonymity) of Bitcoin allows it to be used for money laundering or illegal transactions on the dark web and its ‘Proof of Work’ mechanism requires massive amounts of computing power to function, leading to significant carbon emissions and electronic waste. Blockchains that use ‘Proof of Work’ are the reason it’s so bloody expensive to buy a decent graphics card these days.
Bitcoin was first released in 2008 and was named the best investment of the year by Forbes in 2013. In the decade since, blockchain technology has improved in some ways. For example, many blockchains have shifted from a ‘Proof of Work’ model to one that requires less energy consumption, like ‘Proof of Stake’ or ‘Proof of Authority’. (You can Google the difference if you care, but suffice it to say that one is significantly less eco-friendly than the others.)
Blockchains are becoming faster, more capable of operating at scale, and more compatible across different technologies. Regulations are improving, helping blockchains find a balance that allows data privacy while reducing the risk of pseudonymity leading to criminal activity. These improvements come from developers building on each other’s work, learning from their mistakes, and trying new things—and Moonfrost feels like a meaningful link in this chain (pun intended). Oxalis Games has said that they are being guided by the design pillar ‘Optional and Meaningful’ for Moonfrost‘s blockchain features—and this feels like an improvement on other games where the design sensibility was ‘crypto elements are more important than anything else’.
Don’t worry—I haven’t become a crypto bro just yet. I still think the Web3 vision is underpinned by a bunch of over-hyped technologies, and that traditional databases are just as suitable (or moreso) in most applications where developers decide to use a blockchain. I think I’ve simply reached a point where I consider it ‘unnecessary’ or ‘disappointing’, rather than ‘soul-destroying’ or ‘evil’ (akin to the microtransactions and seasonal content in something like Disney’s Dreamlight Valley).
Blockchain isn’t the only feature that makes Moonfrost unique in the farming sim space; I’m interested in the multiplayer elements that are being hinted at during the alpha tests. When you leave your farm, you enter a Village area where you can see other users, and it has a similar vibe to a main city in an MMORPG. You can chat with other players, visit shops, and participate in events. While I’ve been playing, a ‘Farm Royale’ mode has been added that you can join with others for rewards. (I personally find battle royale games incredibly stressful, so I can’t say it’s the feature I’ve been hoping would be added to my favourite relaxing game genre, but I can appreciate it all the same.) I see the potential in Moonfrost blending the single player relaxation of building a farm and the multiplayer socialisation of an MMO town square.
I think Moonfrost is on the right track with prioritising a satisfying game loop, detailed building mode, and unique multiplayer elements over its blockchain features. I appreciate that Oxalis Games is interested in exploring what Web3 technology can do, but isn’t making a game that requires players to have comprehensive crypto literacy to enjoy what this farming sim has to offer. While I love the ethereal environments, Moonfrost’s emphasis on how the game runs parallel to the real world will likely mean this isn’t the game for me. I don’t have the patience to wait for crops growing and items crafting in real-time, and multiplayer features are generally a turn-off for me in farming sims because I use this genre to escape people rather than socialise with them.
Still, I think Moonfrost has enough unique elements that I’m interested to see how it continues to develop—with or without its blockchain underpinning.
(I also have to mention this, for the three readers who will understand and care: One way you will be able to acquire FROST in Moonfrost will be by mining it from giant crystal spires that fall from the sky during weather events. Mining is a common way to collect resources in farming sims, but it’s also the term for Proof of Work mechanisms used to acquire cryptocurrency. However, you aren’t really mining FROST because this token is stored on Solana, which is a Proof of Stake blockchain.)
