The Red Village. A brutal reality, a merciless Queen.

8 min readNov 9, 2021

But like day begets night, light begets shadow; and a shadow it was that crept shyly across the land. Slowly first, then all at once, the world was consumed by fire and rage. Good disappeared, replaced by hate. And they who lived did not grow old, but died young, knowing only hunger and fear.
It was from the darkness that the Blood Queen came.

The Red Village is a virtual world of dark fantasy and action. In this savage place, the malevolent Blood Queen rules her dominion with a cruel will and utter disregard for life, overseeing deadly fighting Tournaments. Fierce, battle hardened warriors travel from distant lands to compete in front of the Blood Queen and win riches and her favour.

Overview

The Red Village sits at the intersection of the growing blockchain revolution, the mass adoption of NFTs, and the flourishing gaming industry. Technology has fundamentally changed the way that people consume media, play games, and their expectations of the gaming experience; there is a revolution underway, and we are banging on the village gates.

In a universe moulded by Diablo, Runescape, Witcher, Skyrim, and many more, at its heart The Red Village is an NFT-based play-to-earn multiplayer game which takes inspiration in its game mechanics from a pioneer in the blockchain space, ZED RUN.

The journey begins with an intricately created collection of formidable warriors, known as Champions. There are five character classes to choose from; the Barbarian, Wizard, Ranger, Paladin, and Druid. Using these fearsome Champions, players (known in-game as Battlemasters) can enter the famed Red Village Tournaments, put their NFTs up ‘for keeps’ in high-stakes To-the-Death matches, and band together with other NFT-communities that they belong to in brutal Faction v Faction fights.

The Champions

The first Pureblood Champions released in The Red Village ecosystem are known as the Genesis bloodline. There will only ever be 5,000 of these highly-sought after Genesis Champions, composed of the R1 to the R3 Genotype. Later generations are known as Mystics, Warlords, and Lionhearts, and range from the R4 through to the R12 Genotype.

Each Champion is an NFT; each brilliantly unique, randomly generated from from a selection of layers, and distributed in a provably random manner to buyers using Chainlink’s best-in-class Verifiable Random Function (VRF). We have poured our hearts and souls into the 3D artwork over many, many, long months, and truly believe it sets a new standard for NFT projects going forward.

Within each character class, there are seven different breeds; Highborn, Nordic, Half-Dwarf, Elf, Orc, Origin, and The Undead, which radically change the look of the Champion. Each Champion is given a unique name. There are also different hairstyles, hair colours, war paints, and armour colours, each of which is randomly assigned to the Champions.

These rarity traits do not impact fighting ability, but are captivating to look at in your collection.

Each Champion is also assigned varying amounts of skill traits at mint; each has a certain amount of strength, attack, fatigue, defence, and each character class has its own special moves. These skill traits are distributed differently between classes. They do impact fighting ability. Champions also have a range of preferences that impact how they fight; initially, this will be a preferred fighting style, but later will include things such as preferred arena and crowd size, to add extra complexity.

Players who fight in Tournaments regularly will learn their Champions’ fighting preferences, and use the knowledge they gain to give themselves an edge in battle.

Fight Modes

Tournament fighting is the first and most fundamental element of The Red Village. After paying a small entry fee, Battlemasters choose their desired Champion from their Barracks, and submit them for battle. In the hauntingly beautiful Blood Theatre, up to 8 Champions face each other in a 1v1 single elimination style until only one is left standing; this victorious warrior receives 70% of the pooled entry fees. The runner-up receives 27.5%, and 2.5% returns to the Village Community Chest for game development and funding of free-entry Tournaments, which are held to enable Battlemasters to test their Champions’ in a variety of fights.

Data from Tournaments can be studied by Battlemasters who will learn about their Champion’s fighting preferences and successes, and use these statistics to collect, breed, and train more effective Champions. Good players and strong Champions will be more successful over time.

We are also working hard on finishing two other fight modes; To-the-Death and Faction Fights.

To-the-Death is not for the faint of heart; and really, we mean that. Battlemasters fight each other ‘for keeps’, with the losing player’s Champion being kept by the winning player. This high stakes, high risk game plays out over five brutal rounds, in a best-of-five structure.

Faction Fights
The beautiful thing about the NFT community is just that; the community. The Red Village seeks to involve and invigorate other NFT communities through the creation of ‘Factions.’ To join a Faction, players simply need to hold the NFT of another Faction as well as a Red Village Champion. Faction fights can hold up to 16 Champions and are large scale, exciting, savage displays of skill. We have partnered with metaverses such as The Sandbox to explore options around broadcasting Faction fights, allowing Faction members to congregate together in a true metaverse experience.

We will be building custom arenas for each Faction so that they can fight on home turf. Some of our early partners in the Faction space are Metakey and BYOPills — picture an arena of Apostles watching a fight with BYOPills sprayed in blood across the walls, and you start to see what we are talking about.

Summoning

Summoning in The Red Village is known elsewhere in the NFT community as ‘breeding.’ It is the process whereby the skill and cosmetic traits of two NFTs are passed on to a third, entirely new, token of a later generation. In The Red Village, Summoned Champions are known as Halfbloods, and make up the Genotypes from R13 through to R99.

The Summoning ritual is performed by the Bloodwraith Gaa’gore in his lair deep in the Forgotten Forest. Summoning is the only way that new Champions can be introduced to The Red Village ecosystem, outside of the four Pureblood token releases.

As Battlemasters learn their Champions’ strengths and weaknesses, they will be encouraged to Summon with another Champion in the marketplace, attempting to create a superior warrior with better skill traits. Keep in mind that this is a complex process and there is a lot to learn, so it will be the subject of its own article in the near future.

The State of Play

Unlike so many other NFT projects out there that promise the world but deliver an atlas, we have been working tirelessly for the better part of a year to bring a polished blockchain gaming experience to the NFT community. We have partnered with an industry leading full-stack game studio in the USA, and our Game Director is an Emmy-nominated game dev with credits including Marvel, Capcom and Power Rangers. We also are lucky enough to have a Strategic Advisor of Gaming with one of the strongest resumés in the industry, having worked on Diablo II, Starcraft, World of Warcraft, Assassin’s Creed, and Silent Hill. Our overarching strategic advisors, Rob Salha and Chris Laurent, are the co-founders of ZED RUN.

This heavy focus on the game component has paid dividends for The Red Village project; Tournament Fighting is currently in testing and we expect to be live around six weeks after the release of the Genesis collection. That means Battlemasters who hold a Genesis NFT will be able to take their Champion, and actually fight, actually win, in the Blood Theatre soon after the Genesis sale. To-the-Death fights are in development as we speak, and we expect this game mode to be live by early 2022. Further developments, game modes, and metaverse integration are all planned for the future, but our primary focus right now is Tournament Fighting. Once that is running smoothly and gaining momentum, we’ll turn our gaze to the future.

We are really proud of what we have achieved thus far in The Red Village, and are confident that we will leave a long-lasting legacy on the burgeoning NFT space. Before launching, we have already secured partnerships with some of the heaviest hitters in NFTs, including The Sandbox, ZED RUN, Metakey, and BYOPills (and more that we have not yet announced!). We have also secured Factions with some of the largest NFT communities (again, more announcements coming soon!) and expect many, many more over the coming weeks and months.

Summary

The Red Village sits at the intersection of play-to-earn multiplayer gaming and the NFT revolution. Brutal fighting Tournaments between fearsome Champions, the thrill of high-stakes To-the-Death matches, and the camaraderie of Faction-fighting provide invigorating, exciting, and long-term captivating gameplay for Battlemasters.

Games such as ZED RUN and Axie Infinity have shown the potential of this space, and there is no doubt that there are limitless possibilities ahead of us as a community.

Champions, raise your weapons. The Blood Queen calls.

A ruby red the sky doth glow,
Embers, ashes, flames below,
Engulf the world with bitter rage
Friend vs friend, a broken age
Trust thyself, thyself alone
For with the Blood Queen on the throne,
Hell is here, and here is home.

This article is the first in a series introducing The Red Village ahead of the November launch of Genesis Champions. Follow us to find out more: