VOX, a voxel-based NFT ecosystem part of Gala Games, has officially rebranded to VEXI to kickstart its resurgence under a new team and a new mobile game: VEXI Villages.
Why Rebrand from VOX to VEXI?
According to the official announcement post linked in Gala’s tweet, the team admits that VOX has “gained some baggage” over the past few years. Since they seem to be a new development studio overtaking the project, they’d like to leave “past hangups and challenges” behind in order to properly focus on the future together “with this awesome community,” delivering a quality NFT gaming experience where holders get proper new utility for their VOX assets.
That’s indeed what the developers started work on from the beginning of this year by creating “a giant list of all the past plans” while looking at all related NFTs previously sold or given away in order to try and deliver on promised features. This meant creating a web3 game that fits all these past plans, requiring the team to try and figure out how to make 33k avatars playable and land usable in-game while wrapping their heads around what VOX Souls actually are.
“Usually when you design a game you build out a core loop, then expand on it. In some ways we had to build VOX Villages backwards. How do we get all those creatures to work? What’s the best style of game to show off the VOX Land? The questions go on and on. We needed to solve all these issues before we could really hit the ground running to make an awesome mobile game.”
Over time, the team realized that “we were not VOX anymore,” that they were shaping their own “identity, ideas and priorities as a game team and as a franchise.” That’s why the rebrand happened: VEXI is a fresh start, a new identity, a franchise that aims to deliver on past promises while delivering its own new ideas into the future. You can already get a glimpse of this future with their newly-published roadmap in the image below, while trying out their new free to play game by downloading it through the links in the official blog post.
What Is VEXI Villages?
Previously known as Project Cerberus, VEXI Villages is a free to play idle game which launched on Android and iOS devices in an early access state through the Play Store and TestFlight respectively. The Project Cerberus name still seems to be used at the time of writing. You’ll have to link your Gala account to start playing. A Gala Games account can be created using Google, Apple, Facebook, Telegram, and email.
Set in a voxel world divided into 5 different biomes, everyone starts off with an off-chain land plot called the Frontier, and 3 workers called ProtoVOX. These ProtoVOX are avatars who gather resources for you on your piece of land. They each have 6 different upgradable attributes: Might, Agility, Endurance, Smarts, Swagger, and Wit. Each attribute has differing stats that affect their efficiency and speed in gathering a variety of different resources. They also come in different rarities and can be customized with different costumes, rings, necklaces, and bracelets, all of which can provide certain buffs.
You can add ProtoVOX in up to 8 worker slots, with 3 slots available for free to play players. Once added, they’ll automatically get to work, collecting 3 different types of resources available on your land. These resources can be used to create various components, wearables, and more using a printer station in the crafting room. Certain items require leveling up your station to unlock them, while upgrading stations also requires leveling up your account. To increase your account level, you might need to craft a certain structure, and have enough of one of the game’s two in-game currencies. These currencies can be earned by selling resources and components through the game’s official store section, where you can also find daily deals on a variety of items that could help you further progress in your idle gameplay.
NFT Integration
Holders of VOX land NFTs can use their assets in-game as Frontiers on which all VOX avatars can be placed in to gather resources. You can only have 5 Frontiers active at the same time for this early version of the game though, but that will change over time as the developers continue to push out new updates. If you used VOX avatars in the previous web3 idle game, VOX Odyssey, then good news: the levels your avatars acquired there are carried over to this reboot. Resources collected in VOX Odyssey also carry over, and your VOX avatars can still earn XP for collecting resources to level them up.
Anyone who has ever bought an NFT from Gala has also been rewarded with a free special gift, a $1000 “Gala Gives Back” Box containing 4 items that can be used VEXI Villages. This served as an introduction to the VEXI Spooky Box, which is available for a limited time and in limited supply. It comes in 4 different tiers: $20, $100, $500, and $1000 Spooky Boxes. The last one was gifted for free, but is now available for anyone to purchase in order to receive 3 ProtoVOX workers, and a land NFT of Epic rarity. Find out more about each type in the latest announcement.
