BlackChain

BlackChain is a futuristic real-time strategy game heavily influenced by StarCraft. The story takes place in 2088. Humans are rapidly colonizing other planets in the Solar System, including the newly discovered ninth planet, Minerva, which appears to be the origin of a previously unknown superconducting mineral called minervite. Up to 2088, space exploration and mining operations were run by Tycor, the leading space and technology corporation entirely controlled by an AI. However, after it attempted to take over Earth and failed, Earth's governments dissolved Tycor, and its assets are now contested for by other corporations.

As the game begins, the player takes on the role of a military commander in one such corporation, and must move swiftly to gain advantage over their rival, Orinoco. The core gameplay mechanics are very similar to those from StarCraft: the player's force consists of individual units, ranging from infantry to vehicles to air/spacecraft, and, in the campaign, a hero unit representing the player's second-in-command on the field. In most scenarios, the player needs to construct a base, collect resources to amass an army of various units, while researching technologies to upgrade weapons, armour, and gain access to the units' special abilities.

Like in StarCraft, there are two resources, but while the primary one is minervite, harvested by drones from lodes on the ground, the second is cryptocurrency produced by the BlackChain method. This cryptocurrency is constantly generated by "BlackChain cores" and is required to both purchase units and upgrades, and to maintain upkeep, placing a limit on the size of the player's army. The more cores the player has, the more coins they generate, but all buildings also generate heat, which must be taken into account to avoid overheating if too many structures are clustered together.

On the whole, the game should be very familiar to StarCraft players in terms of mechanics, pacing and even look-and-feel, with animated portraits for units and structures, similar-looking interface buttons and the mechanical female announcer. However, there are no alien races in BlackChain, and all sides share the same technology tree.

The single-player campaign spans over 12 scenarios with selectable difficulty levels, which gradually introduce the player to more units and technologies as the story unfolds. Many of these scenarios should also be quite familiar to StarCraft players, including the mission to find and rescue the campaign hero, raid an underground facility with a limited force, and the classic survival until the countdown timer runs out, fending off ever-increasing enemy waves. The game also offers a skirmish mode against up to eight AI players with a selection of pre-designed maps, network play and a built-in map editor.