A Digital Trading Card Game from Another Dimension

We’re super excited to introduce to you our very first game: SkyWeaver.

SkyWeaver is a free-to-play worldwide competitive trading card game that unifies the best aspects of online and physical card games. SkyWeaver is easy to start playing with enough depth for you to discover something new for months and years to come. SkyWeaver cards are truly yours: not blips of data on our servers, but digital assets that you own. You can win and trade them—just like physical cards—and you can do all of these things both inside and outside of our game.

SkyWeaver is a player versus player browser-based game, which means you can play anywhere and anytime. By winning battles and ascending the SkyWeaver ranks, you earn new cards—all of which you can play with, and some of which you can trade.

As Reddit co-founder and Cloud9 co-owner Alexis Ohanian says, “I cannot wait for people to play SkyWeaver. It's a brand new gaming experience that resurrects all the fun of childhood collectible card games—in a browser—and with the ability to trade cards just like in the old days."

Who are we, and why are we making SkyWeaver?

Back in January 2018, we set off on an adventure to build a more free and open digital world. A place to dream and to explore. A place where freedom and fairness are guaranteed. A place with open and shared economies. A place where players own their in-game items, can earn more items through gameplay, and are free to trade these items however they wish. An entire reality that everyone co-creates. A new dimension where everyone gets to play.

To create this new dimension, our company, Horizon Blockchain Games, was born. And, SkyWeaver is our first game.

Welcome to Sky

SkyWeaver takes place in Sky, an alternate reality—a new digital dimension—that exists parallel to Earth. Sky provides a place to live for all the creatures that inhabit it, and it provides you, the player, with resources to use and mana (i.e. energy) to play.

You are SkyWeavers, Pioneers of a New Digital Dimension

You are SkyWeavers. Your quest as a SkyWeaver is to use your mana, hone your skills, summon creatures, cast spells and compete against other SkyWeavers to unlock resources and become the most legendary SkyWeaver of this new digital dimension.

Intuitive and Easy for Anyone to Pick Up

Anyone can jump right in and enjoy SkyWeaver. Whether you’re new to card games or a master of the genre, SkyWeaver will be easy for you to start playing. Our user interface is clean, simple and easy to understand.

Our lead game designer Jon Loucks previously worked at Wizards of the Coast designing Magic: The Gathering, one of the most popular collectible card games ever. Jon, and the rest of our team, are committed to SkyWeaver being fun and easy for casual players to learn, while at the same time having depth and complexity that experienced and competitive players will love to try to master.

SkyWeaver has some familiar card game features like a deck, a hand, a mulligan, incrementing mana, spells with one-shot effects, creatures that battle with attack and health, and you and your opponent take turns playing. Beyond the basics, we’ve made a lot of innovations to make gameplay more exciting.

Deep Strategic Gameplay

Every match you play against other SkyWeavers will be fun and dynamic with unexpected twists to keep you on your toes.

Your Hero (i.e. your character avatar) is playable, and your creatures cast spells, which make for exciting and fast-paced matches. You only play with one of each card in your deck, a design philosophy called singleton. Singleton means that decks have no duplicate cards, which makes deck building more fun, battles more exciting, and outcomes more varied.

Your mana pool is uncapped. This means that you gain more mana with every turn, so that a vast array of spells and attacks are at your disposal throughout the match, enabling unexpected and game-changing moments that feel fresh every time you play.

Fun and Seamless Deck Building

SkyWeaver comes with an in-game deck builder for you to customize your playstyle and build the deck of your dreams. The deck leaderboard lets you see which decks perform best. And, we plan to launch the SkyWeaver Shop, which will make it easy for you to trade your cards. More on that later!

Customize Your Playstyle, Become a Legendary SkyWeaver

As a SkyWeaver, you’ll choose from four different playstyles, better known as prisms. Each prism offers you a different deck type and access to different creatures and spells. The first four prisms are Heart, Wisdom, Strength, and Agility. Choose the prism that best represents you, or combine two prisms for more gameplay possibilities.

Each Sky creature and spell come from one of eight different elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Metal, Mind, Light, and Dark. Different abilities are associated with each element, and as a SkyWeaver, you’ll use your mana to summon creatures that battle alongside you. By winning battles against your opponent, you earn new cards and win the allegiance of creatures and spells. Choose the elements you resonate with most.

Powered by Blockchain, so You Own Your Cards—For Real

Unfortunately, most online games today forbid you from trading your in-game items. In other words, you don’t actually own the digital items that you win or pay for. If you did, you’d be free to do with your items whatever you pleased. Fortunately, with the discovery of blockchain technologies and a number of innovations we’re making at Horizon, your digital SkyWeaver cards truly belong to you. You own them the same way you’d own a physical card from Magic, Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh, or the same way you owned a physical boxed copy of Zelda you bought from a brick and mortar store.

Each SkyWeaver card is securely registered in your personal Ethereum blockchain wallet. You’re the only one with access to this wallet, which means that no one—not even us at Horizon—can access your cards or take them away. The cards themselves are blockchain assets that exist forever, which means that you have the freedom to play with them and trade them however you please. We’ve built the Arcadeum arcade and wallet (more on this in the future), so that you can easily manage the digital cards that you win and accumulate by playing SkyWeaver.

By Owning SkyWeaver Cards, You’re a Part Owner of the Game Itself

Up until now, every online game you’ve played has been wholly owned by the game publisher, and the publisher has been the one earning all the revenue. At Horizon, however, we believe in shared economies where the players earn too.

Collect in Sky. Trade Anywhere.

By playing SkyWeaver and ascending the leaderboards, you can win new cards that become your property. You can play with the cards or trade them with other players. The SkyWeaver Shop is a peer-to-peer decentralized exchange built right into the game and it's coming soon. The shop is a place where you can acquire cards you’re seeking and trade cards you’d like to exchange.

You’re also free to trade your cards on other exchanges like OpenSea and Rarebits, or gift your cards to friends.

Open, Secure, Fair and Transparent

Being powered by blockchain means that the SkyWeaver economy is open, secure, fair and transparent. With each card securely registered on the Ethereum blockchain, you can track your cards’ rarities. You can rest assured that the cards in your deck will always be playable. All SkyWeaver cards are eternal, which means that we never rotate cards out of play.

Lastly, SkyWeaver will never be a pay-to-win experience. As a true free-to-play game, we’ll never force you to pay in order to stay competitive. By playing the game and honing your skills as a SkyWeaver, you’ll always have the opportunity to win and earn cards that impact gameplay. SkyWeaver belongs to our players, and we’re committed to it being accessible for everyone.

Join Our Community. We’d Love to Hear from You!

SkyWeaver early access has already begun. We’re having tons of fun playing and testing the game with our community. If you or your friends would like to play, please sign up at SkyWeaver.net. All players have the chance to compete for exclusive rewards, and we invite new people to play each week.

In the near future, we’ll share a development roadmap, so that you can see what we’re working on and what to expect.

Come chat with us on Discord for sneak peeks, the latest news, and so that we can dream and explore together. Be sure to also subscribe to our subreddit and follow us on Twitter.

To learn more about how blockchain will upgrade gaming forever, read this Medium post by our Chief Architect and CEO, Peter Kieltyka: A New Dimension of Gaming.

Check back here again soon, and to get notified about our latest blog posts, subscribe to our newsletter.

Love,

The Horizon team, developers of SkyWeaver