Influence: How to Play the New Starknet Game

Onchain games are heating up, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Starknet gaming scene right now.

That said, currently all eyes are on Influence, an onchain strategy game that's been 3 years in the making on Starknet and that's set to officially launch this Thursday, June 27th.

In this article, Influence community steward Jean-Paul Faraj preps us with a walkthrough of all the basics of the game, including learning how to play, tokenomics, launch events, and more...

🌌 What Is Influence?

Influence is a highly strategic space strategy colonization game, where players vie for dominance and control in the newly formed colony within the Adalian asteroid belt.

It was one of the earliest teams to commit to Starknet back in 2021 and is launching its fully onchain space strategy MMO to mainnet on June 27th, 2024.

For newcomers to Influence, this guide offers essential colonist training, equipping you to thrive in Adalia and participate in upcoming events.

👾 Playing Influence

The "Getting Started in Influence" guide and the Influence Wiki will be the best resources for beginners to learn the first steps in the game. There are also tutorials on YouTube, and the Discord community is filled with helpful resources and members.

⭐ Unique Features

1) There are no NPCs

Influence has zero non-playable characters (NPCs) and is completely player-driven. Soon, players will also be able to add their own missions, akin to player-vs-environment (PvE) quests, and dictate what rewards they want to give the people who complete them.

2) Self-sustainable gameplay

Influence's core loop centers around mining, processing, refining, building, trading, and expanding. You'll start as a crew in the asteroid belt and then help shape the belt's future, with the challenge being to continue expanding colonies across Adalia. After a short initial period during which seeded products will be present within the in-game markets, the game's economy will be run entirely by the players.

3) Composable gaming world

Adalia won’t be the home to just one game! Thanks to its fully onchain nature, many games can be built around the core world. Think Warcraft III online extended with various mini-games mods using core assets. Additionally, the team behind Influence is providing resources to help developers easily build on top of the base infrastructure.

4) Fully onchain

This characteristic makes assets extremely flexible. It also enables ever-evolving, unstoppable gaming experiences. Being fully onchain ensures the “unstoppability” of Influence and the Adalian universe and long-term alignment between developers building in Adalia and the players.

5) Based in hard science

Influence boasts over 240 items to mine, build, and refine and more than 250k real-time orbiting asteroids to strategize over. Travel is even based on realistic orbital equations (i.e. we are doing rocket science onchain) for mapping out and proving ship trajectories between asteroids.

6) Real stakes

The peer-to-peer (P2P) onchain economy lets players own their experience. This brings meaningful risk and reward into an economic space strategy MMO. Your world, your rules, your assets. Rent land, trade characters, amass in-game fortunes, and expand your influence as you see fit.

🪙 Economy and Tokenomics

The in-game currency of Adalia, which Influence uses, is called SWAY. It is designed to help create a stable in-game economy and thus its tokenomics are geared towards growing the supply in line with playerbase growth. Players can earn $SWAY by:

• Extracting resources or building goods to sell at market
• Managing a market and collecting fees from each trade
• Leasing plots of your asteroid or members of your crew to other players
• Providing liquidity at markets to earn incentives set by market owners
• Trading and taking advantage of arbitrage opportunities

Notably, Influence is launching SWAY in a "fair launch" style. What’s this mean for players and the community?

The fair launch

On day one, Influence will distribute a large percentage of the total supply to the community and use decentralized exchanges (DEXes) on Starknet to provide liquidity for new players to start playing the game.

Remaining SWAY tokens are also earmarked for the community via initiatives through in-game events, referrals, and other community activities and grants. There are zero investor allocations or token vesting unlocks. The goal is to create a sustainable and unstoppable game where the community is in control.

Game pricing

To start playing Influence players can purchase one of two Starter Packs (Basic and Advanced) from the in-game store starting at $30.

Additionally, the in-game currency, SWAY, can be bought directly from the store at launch. The SWAY is sourced directly from various decentralized exchanges (DEX) and is available via AVNU, the leading DEX aggregator on Starknet. It is important to note that all SWAY is sourced this way, in a fully decentralized manner, aligned with the fair launch.

☄️ Game Assets and NFTs

Certain assets used in Influence constitute the heart of the Adalian universe, the autonomous world that Influence is set in. These NFTs and SWAY are tradeable and transferable by their owners across both Ethereum (L1) and Starknet (L2), including in secondary markets:

• Asteroids – The basic land of Adalia (NFTs)
• Crewmates – The playable characters that populate the belt (NFTs)
• Ships – The favored mode of transit between asteroids (NFTs)
• SWAY – The Adalian currency (ERC-20)

Other assets are purely in-game in Influence. These assets are purchased and sold with SWAY and form the basis of the entire in-game economy:

• Buildings – Facilities for producing ships and construction materials aiding further colony expansion. They may be shared or rented to other players for SWAY in-game.
• Products – Extracted from the asteroids and crafted into intermediate products, food, propellant, etc. These may be stored in warehouses, or traded to other players within the player-built and player-controlled marketplaces.

💰Events, Rewards, and Grants

On June 27th, players will dive into the world of Adalia and start working alongside thousands of others to expand the initial colony and explore new territories.

As a new colonist it’s risky out there in the belt, and you’ll mostly be learning everything on the fly. To sweeten this initial chaos, players can compete or collaborate to earn SWAY in our launch events and missions.

🧠 Zooming Out

Influence has been one of the most focused and long-term builders on Starknet, and fans of games like Eve Online, Crusader Kings, and Stellaris will find its deep, complex gameplay familiar. In leveraging Starknet's technology, Influence can match the UX of traditional web2 games like these while also benefitting from fully onchain infra.

Whether you're an avid player of space strategy games or just a new explorer of onchain games, Influence is one to check out, as it's a fresh example of what the next wave of crypto gaming can look like. Ahead of June 27th, prepare for the launch by following Influence’s Twitter or joining the Discord!