Note: This article is originally dated April 15th, 2022. It has been migrated to optimise our Medium publications.
Question 1:
I would like to open the AMA asking you to give us a short introduction to the Astro Hounds project for our community?
Answer:
I would love to!
Welcome to the fantasy racing petaverse!
Astro Hounds is a dog racing metaverse.
You can race with your own dog or one of the NFT hounds.
There are 4 racing leagues. The only way to move up the ranks is to win more races with your astro hound and secure your position on the leaderboard.
Train your hounds to level up with short mini games.
Each racing arena is different: fire, ice, the storm you name it, we have it. The astro hounds must be able to compete in them all if they are to win the league.
The higher the league, the more $HOUND to be made. This is our platform currency, fuelling the entire metaverse.
You can also participate in races by betting on the race outcome, offering a second stream of $HOUND and a new form of fun.
Lastly, the astro Hound NFTs are breedable. You can breed 2 highly trained famous race hounds to produce offspring that are already set to be a total winner.
And the best thing is that we have a new trailer coming out soon too!
Question 2:
Can you tell us a bit about yourself, your role, and your involvement in the Astro Hounds project? What about the team behind the scene?
Answer:
I am so excited to introduce the astro team because I believe in us so much. We are an international and talented team of 16, growing every day. We have experience in crypto: team members have worked at KuCoin, DAO Maker, and countless NFT projects before.
We also have incredible art and entertainment experience: our art team comes from big names such as Netflix, Disney, and Amazon Prime. This is what allows us to create such incredible visuals in a short space of time, which is invaluable to producing the most exciting racing game.
Our developers have 7+ experience in blockchain and gaming, having produced 100s of games before. Most notably, we have a senior producer of EA Games advising us.
Lastly, I come from traditional finance, previously having worked at large financial institutions such as Credit Suisse bank and Bloomberg. Now I am refocusing on decentralized finance.
Question 3:
What are the main features of Astro Hounds?
Answer:
Training: this is how you level your hound up. This is with immersive gameplay — here you can really interact with your NFTs. It feels like they are your own dog.
Breeding: to expand your hound NFTs, and just like real life, they are breedable dogs that can produce puppy NFTs! These can be raised and kept as your own, or sold on the NFT marketplace.
Racing: of course, the center of Astro hounds is the races themselves. There are 4 leagues, and in each league, there is a Grand Prix or one-off race fixtures. The higher the stakes, the higher the payout.
Exploring: all of this crazy action is taking place across 7 fantasy planets in the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy. That means you get to explore these planets for yourselves, purchase land NFTs plots, or just immerse yourself in the environment and scenery.
But don’t hate me if we add more.
Question 4:
Please tell us more details about the NFT system (NFT Hounds, NFT Marketplace, etc.) that Astro Hounds will integrate?
Answer:
The NFT marketplace is called the Central Cerebus Station.
This is where you can purchase and explore different NFTs: from the hounds themselves to training gear, to racing accessories, to breeding potion.
You can also sell your NFTs in the flea market there!
These are land plots that you can also purchase as NFTs:
Question 5:
Can you please describe to our community the economic/business model? What about $HOUND tokenomics/utilities?
Answer:
We only have one token to fuel us through the entire metaverse. This simplifies everything and broadens the utility of one token for everything.
$HOUND utility breakdown:
- DAO club
- Race entry
- NFT drops
- Governance
- Planet travel
- Training gyms
- VIP GP access
Best 5 Questions from the Twitter campaign
Question 1
“What are your marketing strategies and how do you plan on implementing global adoption? How do you intend on getting more users, community, and investments from all parts of the world?”
Answer:
Regarding our Marketing strategy, we are preparing a game trailer that we hope will shock and stun the world as a whole and a game demo to bring the thrill, fantasy, and excitement to your screens. By making our project go viral, we are onboarding more and more KOLs in preparation, expanding our social media platforms to TikTok and Instagram, as well as forming partnerships with big brands that will bring credibility and eyes to our project.
As for the community, we are starting to onboard proud ambassadors to lead their own local community, opening up local language channels to cater to those who may not speak the best English (we will do Romania!!). Today we onboarded someone for the Spanish-speaking world, as well as Chinese, Turkey, and the Philippines.
Question 2:
“How Astro Hounds is planning to innovate this industry and what will make them competitive on the market?”
Answer:
This begins with our mindset. We are a play and earn platform, not a play to earn. That means that our focus is to provide an exciting and fast-paced game, that also enables you to earn money in the process. By taking this approach, we know that we will stand out.
Most games are not focused on providing value everything is a cash grab to them, and you can see that from the way they build largely fake communities (through airdrops and those kinds of things).
We have been building our product long before we started marketing…
More specifically, the main advantage that we have above other racing games, is that we offer AR with scanning your own dog. This is what makes us truly a metaverse and not only a game. Going forwards, we would love to integrate other ways of involving other pets also in other mini-games, so that astro hounds can become a true petaverse.
Question 3:
“I noticed that the project’s ROADMAP is purely focused on this Year 2022. Can you give us some insights and direction of your ASTROHOUNDS Project for the next year 2023?”
Answer:
Product progress for the year 2023 would be to focus on expanding the dog petaverse: adding new gameplay to the platform, offering wider $HOUND utility, and overall providing more fun and variety. At the moment, we are offering training, breeding, and racing. But going forward, we will listen to our community, and together come up with new game additions to add to our platform. Maybe it could be RPG, or brain teasers… who knows! But we can come up with that together… That way, we can ensure we really do expand the metaverse into the areas that are the most in-demand.
Question 4:
“As mentioned, you said that real-life dogs can be scanned and minted into the Astro Hounds metaverse. Are these NFTs integrable into other metaverses such as Sandbox and Decentraland?”
Answer:
Yes, we are already working on partnerships with other crypto projects, for example, Lunaverse. So, not only can they be ported into other metaverses, but they may also have utility beyond Astro Hounds. They will be playable in other games.
Fortunately, dogs are a native part of the crypto world and something that we believe can fit into other games or metaverses easily. Likewise, in the future, we may be joined by other creatures on our race track!
Whilst they may be Terra NFTs, (as well as ERC) you will be able to bridge cross-chain them to make them compatible wherever.
Question 5:
“Are there plans for equippable NFT upgrades on our hounds such as saddles? These are potential game-changers and very interesting to be used in-game.”
Answer:
Great question! Yes, we do have a lot of racing accessories to supercharge your hound! These can make them more compatible for races in the different arenas with varying environments. For example, rain jackets for watery race tracks, thick coats for cold environments, shoes for hot terrain… these items can be the tipping edge to win the race, but do not undermine the importance of stamina, speed & agility. A raincoat can never save the slowest hound.
Live Q & A
Question:
“What can you tell us about the “EXPANSION” ?”
Answer:
And once we have built out metaverse, we will expand it more and more with new minigames, new planets… new ways to interact.
Question:
How do you plan to make things different? As u already know and are aware the main competitor is Pegaxy.
Answer:
We will beat pegaxy and DeRace because their graphics are not that good! Their races are not exciting to watch…
But most importantly, our hounds are smart NFTs which means that they change over time. You can train them, you can interact with them, you can breed them. Because we make them alive.
Question:
When do you release the game, do you plan to release the full version or an alpha and after to upgrade the game as it goes along?
Answer:
The game release will work like this:
- Game demo — June
- Beta version — November
- Alpha version (bug fixes and so on) February
Question:
How will be the dogs purchased? are there any NFTs released before the game release?
Answer:
NFTs will be released before IDO most likely… so around June time.
we are not sure how we will release them, but likely an auction.
Question:
How do you plan to keep a steady economy? How will be the tokens burned so that it doesn’t drop too much in value?
Answer:
We burn 50% of the revenue generated from Astro hounds, so as to protect $HOUND against inflation and protect our community, offering long-term growth and stability.
