Back in August this year, the developers of play to earn racing game Chicken Derby revealed that they’ve been working on raising funds to continue development or seeing if another studio would be willing to take over the web3 game. A bit later in the same month, and following community feedback, the team decided to hand over the project to the company behind Muzzle Run, a play to earn Greyhound racing game, whom were deemed to be the best team to take over the blockchain game thanks to their experience in the web3 racing space and their commitment to keeping Chicken Derby true to its roots while continuing to improve it with various new features.
The founder of Muzzle Run, Muzz, said the following in a Discord announcement:
“I’ve always admired Chicken Derby as one of the pioneers in play-to-earn racing and blockchain gaming, and for its distinctive style and passionate community. Being asked to step in is both exciting and humbling. We see huge potential here and are ready to bring our agile approach to deliver fast improvements while tapping into the experience and passion of the community to prioritize the features you want”
Muzz acknowledges that while they’re not a large team, “we’re quick on our feet” and they’ve also been offered assistance by various community members to create new features.
New Ownership of Chicken Derby Celebrates With $6K Chicken Run Tournament
In celebration of the web3 game’s new ownership, the new team is running its first main event for the game: the Chicken Run tournament. This event features a qualifying round that started on August 30th and ends on September 20th. It’s open for all C, B, and D class chickens, and to qualify for the actual tournament, your chicken needs to get at least 5 races during this period before September 20th. Doing so qualifies your chicken for the competition, and there is no limit to the number of chickens you can qualify, so you can try getting as many of your chickens into the tournament as you want, with entry said to be done automatically.
If you do qualify, you’ll be taking part in a tournament with a $6000 total prize pool, competing for more than 6 days, with each day differing in the distance your chicken(s) race. The track type is randomly determined for each day, and each chicken gets to race in its class across all distances. You will have 6 days to race every day and earn points by making it in the top 6 of a race. The top 12 chickens from each class will progress to the grand final, which will be a randomly generated race featuring a prize pool of $2000 per class.
New Chicken Derby Roadmap for 2024 & 2025
Following the start of the qualifying stage for Chicken Run, the new team shared their roadmap for Chicken Derby on September 11th, outlining their plans for the game from Q3 2024 to Q4 2025.
Q3 & Q4 2024 Milestones
For Q3 of this year, the team is planning on improving communication with the community to keep everyone informed on what’s going on behind the scenes. This means that players will consistently be updated on developments while having the opportunity to directly ask the developers any questions to strengthen trust between the development studio and the community.
Some of the first key fixes the new team is looking to add to provide a more streamlined blockchain gaming experience includes enhancements to the automatic race generator, UI tweaks, quality-of-life improvements, updated game documentation, and revived social media engagement. Muzz also mentioned a new tournaments tab is under works in one of the Discord announcements, and that they’re working with the original team to keep development going smoothly.
The BAWK Token Presale will undergo a relaunch this Q3 2024, featuring updated tokenomics that are said to be “specifically designed to drive increasing appreciation over time.” In Q4, the focus will be on releasing an advanced breeding system in collaboration with the community. This breeding system will let players create and preserve strong bloodlines “while maintaining the long-term value of their chickens.”
2025 Plans
In Q1 2025, the Chicken Derby Marketplace will relaunch in an overhauled state to make it safe and easy to buy items with up-to-date metadata in a trusted internal place, so you won’t need to use external platforms to trade in-game assets.
Q2 2025 will mark the revamp of the class system that will simplify the system to make sure “every chicken has a place to run” while introducing tiered rewards for higher classes to deliver a simpler racing system that rewards progression to higher ranks. You can also look forward to daily tournaments going live in the same quarter, with each featuring a guaranteed prize pool. These races will take place each day no matter how many players participate in them. Outside of these daily tournaments though, it does look like the developers are planning on adding a system in which races can be cancelled and refunded if less than 4 chickens enter a race within a certain time period.
The last listed milestones are for Q3 2025, during which the team plans on reworking the land system as well as releasing a new animal to race together with chickens. The land system overhaul is set to fulfill previous promises but come with new tweaks in accordance with the current market, alongside new updates to give land more meaning and purpose in Chicken Derby. As for plans to release a new animal for racing, specifics haven’t been revealed, but it is said that this new addition “will maintain the quirky, fun style of Chicken Derby,” bringing more variety to the ecosystem while opening up more earning opportunities and strategic gameplay.
The full roadmap is available here.
