Crafting game with MANY tokens

I've been running events called "game jams" for … decades actually. Something you do as a game jammer is take any theme, idea, or restriction, and think about what you could make given those conditions. The thing that caught my attention learning about Cardano and the Mary hardfork was native tokens and multi-asset transactions. It's my understanding that platforms like Ethereum aren't as flexible. What sort of game could I build around no limits on what you can include in a transaction and smart contract?

One of the most important concepts in games is state. Have I won the game? Do I have enough coins to buy the sword? Do I have the key?

Wallets are good at storing things, and the possession of tokens can be used to represent state: A token for coins; A non-fungible token for a key. A smart contract is code that interacts with things from a wallet, and with code we can make rules: I must have 100 coins to buy the sword; If I have the sword I win.

If we were to tokenize game resources like stone, wood, and water—NFT'ize tools, weapons, and gear—we can represent some rather sophisticated player and world states with just tokens. Combining them with smart contracts we can make crafting systems, resource gathering systems, random encounter combat systems, virtual pet/livestock simulations, etc. What is key is none of these systems need to be real-time. They can be executed asynchronously, like turns in a board game.

By representing player and world data as wallets and tokens on a blockchain, we can decentralize our game data. If the game rules and logic also execute on the blockchain, we've taken the first step towards creating a fully decentralized game. In practice we will need to host the client app and our graphics, but this is a great start.

It's easy for ideas like this get out of control, so the experienced game developer in me says we need to be careful not to promise too much. I also have concerns about operating cost, as it's yet unclear what executing a complex smart contract will cost for the players.

I'm looking to build the following:

A simple game initially focused on gathering resources and crafting. It's a game you play daily by executing the gathering contract. Once you've collect resources, you can craft refined resources and items via the crafting contract. Items can be used to improve your gathering, or let you gather other resources. All this contract work will be behind the scenes of a web-app featuring your character avatar. Pick your actions for the day, and confirm them by executing the contract.

I see this game as a good way to get new users familiar with transactions and smart contracts on Cardano. My hope is that transaction fees stay low, costing players no more than a few cents to play. I also feel like having real world transactions featuring a dozen tokens will be good for pushing the limits of wallets, and real world complex smart contracts will be good for the ecosystem. If costs are too high, my hope is we can be a reason for the community to vote to reduce fees.

The game could be used as a faucet for new users, giving tokens daily to anyone that plays (again assuming fees are low). With those tokens you can continue playing, eventually acquiring your first NFT through crafting. Alternatively, you can learn about trading in the greater ecosystem using any of your tokens.

Now for the fun part: I'd like us to explore is having a finite supply of resources, as well as in game consequences once the world supply of a resource drops below a certain point. Technically this means players will be able to indirectly interact with each other since they're all pulling from the same pools. This also means there is an end game. How long will our little planet survive?

I see potential in this as a long term project. Between Cardano infrastructure updates, being a game with a finite resource supply, it means our planets eventually "die" or become uninhabitable (un-minable). We can then launch new planets with new resource pools, new resources, new features like ways to reclaim land/replant trees, or whole new actions like hunting for monsters or milking cattle. I'm excited to see what emerges as planets burn and we iterate on that.

I am assuming we will eventually get a WEB3 wallet like Metamask in the Cardano ecosystem. It wont be practical to play the game until that happens. Alternatively if Daedalus or other wallets added web-app support, that might work too. I also have some concerns about folks exploiting the game in an attempt to strip-mine the planet, which makes me especially interested in Atala PRISM.

Funding means I don't need to juggle other work while building the first versions of this, and it lets me hire an artist to make it look good.