Spellfire's 1994 card game returns with NFT owners earning 90% of upgrades

Ashton Addison: What is Spellfire, and how did it come back?▶ 00:21

Norbertas Drazdauskas: Spellfire has a long history. It was first launched in 1994 by a completely different, US-based team. The owners abandoned the game at the end of the 90s, and it went almost 20 years without support. Our current CEO played it in his youth and took part in many tournaments. As a businessman, he started wondering what had happened to Spellfire, and it turned out the rights were available to purchase. He bought them and gave Spellfire a second life.

Ashton: How does the game actually play?▶ 01:55

Norbertas: Spellfire is a player-versus-player collectible card game. Players build decks from booster packs and fight each other. The point is to build enough realms to win. In the standard version, once you build six realms you win, and your opponent must not let you do that. The game is fought with champions, spells and abilities, and it feels like a fantasy world such as World of Warcraft. There are various classes, like psionicists, thieves and magicians, which make it very immersive and fun to play.

Ashton: How long has the team been building the blockchain version?▶ 03:10

Norbertas: The trademark was re-registered about three years ago, and that's when development started. Every single card is different and every rule had to be polished, so the first few years were about getting the game off the ground. The blockchain side took off around the middle of last year, when the team became fully focused on the digital game, the token and the NFTs. We launched the NFTs in October. The NFTs currently for sale are revenue-generating ones, an investment in the longevity of the game, and they earn you revenue from other players using those cards.

Ashton: Are all the cards NFTs?▶ 04:28

Norbertas: There are three types: non-NFT cards, NFT cards and original NFT cards. The originals are the most limited, the rarest and the most valuable, and they generate revenue from the sales of playing NFT cards. Cards can be physical and digital. You can open a booster pack at home, and the physical cards are linked by a QR code to the digital world, where they can be upgraded to NFTs. When players open booster packs and upgrade a card to an NFT, the owner of the original earns 90% of the transaction. Since it's a community game, we really wanted to give back to the community. Those funds aren't just going into the developers' pockets.

Ashton: Where can people buy and trade the NFTs?▶ 06:51

Norbertas: Currently they're on OpenSea, which was a temporary solution to get NFT sales off the ground. We're making our own dedicated marketplace, which will be released in the very near future, hopefully in weeks, not years. We plan to add more purchase options. Right now the only way to buy is with wrapped Ethereum on Polygon, which lowers transaction fees. Once you've bought a card, you can instantly sell it for a higher price if you wish.

Ashton: What is the Spellfire token used for?▶ 08:03

Norbertas: It's the main utility token of the game. It will be used for card upgrades, so the 90% that goes to the original owner is paid in Spellfire tokens. The plan is also to make it possible to buy NFTs with it. There are two currencies: gold, an in-game currency that isn't minted on any blockchain, and Spellfire, the cryptocurrency. We did it this way so people with no interest in crypto can still play the game and enjoy the experience.

Ashton: How is DeFi built into the ecosystem?▶ 09:10

Norbertas: We launched the token a little over two weeks ago and have already implemented quite a few staking solutions. Just today we made the Spellfire LP farm available on TokensFarm, on BSC. The token is listed on Huobi, Gate.io and MEXC, and it's also available on PancakeSwap and Uniswap. We're really focused on decentralized finance and trying to make the game as integrated into those systems as possible.

Ashton: Where is development now, and what's next?▶ 10:04

Norbertas: We're focused on developing the digital version of Spellfire. The physical cards are almost done and ready for printing and packaging into boosters, but our main focus is the alpha and beta versions of the digital game. In just a few days we should have sneak peeks of how it will look, a first look at the digital game. The full game release is planned for around the end of this year, perhaps a few months before. We want to get the alpha and beta to the community as soon as possible, which should take just a few months.

Ashton: What will keep gamers and crypto users coming back rather than just following the hype?▶ 11:32

Norbertas: Spellfire is cross-generational, and we're making it as accessible as possible. Players can use physical cards one minute and hop into the digital game on a tablet, phone or laptop the next. In the future there may even be a way to put on a VR headset and see the world of Spellfire. We're also planning an announcement, still a secret, about integrating with another metaverse game. The CCG concept has been known for decades, and we're really trying to revolutionize the whole space by incorporating all of the generations and all of the realities together.