White Paper

War Snails is a gaming NFT collection of 5,000 unique ERC-721 tokens with a randomised combination of over 200 hand-drawn traits. In addition to awesome artwork, War Snails have been built from the ground up with gaming in mind, specifically gameplay inspired by the iconic Worms game, where humour and skill combined to create a blockbuster hit.

Whilst we dig avatar only projects in the NFT space we also recognise the potential limit to the utility of these which is why we’ve designed War Snails from the ground up to offer a wealth of utility from p2e (play to earn) mechanisms to breeding, staking and betting.

We’ve also grown a little sceptical of projects that promise a future metaverse for your NFTs without much real detail about how this is going to actually work. The War Snails project is one that we hope you can easily picture, it’s meant to be accessible to all and above all else, fun.

We loved playing Worms when we were kids and wanted to inject some of that humour and skillful gameplay into the War Snails project. Ever wondered what would happen if an Angry Bird and a Worm had a baby...that’s a War Snail.

War Snails gameplay will consist of 3vs3 battles that take place on destructible backgrounds. We’ve got to take our hats off to Axie Infinity here for laying the foundations but feel there’s a huge opportunity in making a game that’s more accessible in the first instance yet still offers a steep skill curve to mastery.

Becoming a War Snails Sergeant Major will require the mastery of both the physical environment and the tactical use of a huge arsenal of insane weapons.

Much like the original Worms game that was released in 1995, War Snails will battle on 2 dimensional platform style levels. You’ll be able to move your Snail by slithering, jumping, teleporting, climbing and more.

Once positioned you’ll need to choose from your arsenal of weapons to inflict maximum damage on your opponent whilst making sure you don’t nail yourself in the process. Backgrounds to levels will be culturally relevant and poke fun at those taking themselves too seriously.

The War Snails game will be accessible via browser, desktop application and on mobile for Android and iOS.

In addition to a combination of visual traits, War Snails will also be randomly assigned 4 physical traits that will provide in-game advantages, for example the ability to jump further or to sustain greater damage from a napalm attack. We’re already giddy with excitement. Don’t worry, visual traits will also carry special abilities and provide access to rare weapons, power-ups and breeding advantages.

War Snail owners will periodically be gifted power-ups and special weapons via air drops. Special abilities will also be airdropped to the winners of War Snails tournaments and regular competitions.

At the heart of any successful games venture lies an enthusiastic and supportive community. A lot of projects recognise this and proceed to manipulate optics and encourage FOMO and short-term thinking, based purely on flipping NFTs to make a quick buck. This ain’t cool, it’s so incredibly short-sighted that it threatens the space as a whole.

There’s a fine line between deserved hype and manufactured hype and we want to assure our community that we’re here for the long-haul and that we categorically believe we can build something significant but also need to be clear that that will take time.
Now that’s not to say that we will be moving at a snail’s pace (apols) and shying away from publicity...we love making noise and getting awesome people together to build the future. We’re hoping War Snails will enjoy interstellar attention and support as this will help us to build faster and better.

The point is that we’re not looking to foster a large group of shill-monkeys who watch floor prices on OS all day and FUD when they don’t get 10x overnight. Look at the quality projects in the space helping people to acquire real wealth, that’s where we’re headed.

We’ll be using Discord and Twitter to engage with our community. On our Discord we’ll be air-dropping rewards to early members so scoot over there now if you haven’t already and get involved (https://discord.gg/UPTM26gH).

War Snails owners will be able to compete in tournaments to win power-ups and monetary prizes. We have created a draft structure for the tournaments which will be based on your location and the overall strength of your War Snail. Regional finalists will advance through from National Leagues to the Global League where prize-pools increase in value at each stage.

In addition to tournaments there will always be an opportunity for War Snail owners to compete in a P2E and PvP setting where a betting option will exist to allow players to be more in control of their earning potential.

In the War Snails P2E environment rewards will come in the form of boosts and power-ups that can either be traded or used to pay for breeding.

We believe the War Snails game format is very well suited for the Play to Earn model, it’s familiar, accessible and there’s a healthy skill curve to mastery. The game will be highly competitive and engaging, not just to play but also to watch.

We believe that betting represents a smart mechanism for allowing liquidity from outside of the War Snails ecosystem to enter, thereby not creating instability in a beast that feeds from itself before imploding.

In the founding team there are several super brains that have worked in the technical branch of betting for decades and we’re excited about this aspect of War Snails.

We see a future in which War Snails tournaments are streamed via Twitch with spectators having the opportunity to bet prior to and in-game on epic battles. Fees from betting will be passed into our Treasury which will be used to reward P2E players.

A global leaderboard will give you a snapshot of where you stand in the War Snails universe. Players making big moves will enjoy air drops and power-ups. It’s super important that mechanisms exist for players to progress to higher earnings over time if they’re prepared to put the effort in. Much like the real world operates, you gotta put something in to get something out. For players with deep liquidity there will be an Owner/Player lounge where deals can be struck that provide owners with passive income split with players for active participation.

All War Snails will start off at Private level, even the rarest. Players will earn XP points through play and progress through 13 stages to eventually be awarded their Sergeant Major badge. This will be a serious achievement that only the smartest and most committed War Snails will reach.

One of the challenges the NFT gaming space faces is how to lower barriers to entry, especially if the genesis NFT is very expensive or if the supply is limited.

Our plan to allow unlimited players over time will be made feasible via the War Snails breeding programme. 10,000 War Snails will initially be minted; these are the Genesis Snails that retain the ability to breed indefinitely.

Breeding costs will increase through the generations but these costs will reset periodically to ensure that no Genesis Snail becomes infertile or uneconomical to breed from. The timed delay on the reset mechanism will ensure that there is not an oversupply of War Snails.

There will be exclusive tournaments, air drops and other benefits afforded to owners of Genesis Snails and it will be clear from visual traits whether a snail is a Genesis Snail or whether it has been bred.

Prior to the game launch there will be an opportunity to stake your War Snails to earn passive income. We are working with one of the leading experts in the De-Fi space to ensure a simple yet lucrative offering. More details to be released on this shortly.

We love using our favourite NFTs as our PFPs but sometimes find it’s a bit of a faff getting the right sizes and especially for ancillary collateral like banner/cover images.

We want to make it easy for fans to create derivatives and to support War Snails across their various social channels so we’re building a neat little wizard that will auto-create optimized social collateral...all you’ll need to do is enter the ID of your War Snail NFT and then choose from an array of awesome outputs.

Let’s be real, nobody is a 10 year expert in NFT gaming, it’s a nascent sector that shifts and pulses with an unprecedented level of energy and unpredictability. That said, we’re not a bunch of noobs either and amongst the core team you’ve got a serial exited tech founder that has raised over £200m, a PhD designer/developer, one of London’s most coveted urban artists and the CEO of the world’s leading retro games platform.

To add to that we’re a bunch of long time crypto maxis with ventures in DeFi, mining and trading with deep networks and an appetite for quality and rapid growth.

The glue between us all is the deep burning desire to build an awesome community around beautiful art and gameplay as a precursor to creating an ecosystem that allows like-minded people to benefit both commercially and spiritually. We also want to have fun and be ourselves in the process, we’ll curse, challenge each other and strive to deliver the most value possible to our community.

LFG!

War Snails HQ