Blockade Games is Now Accepting Third-Party Development Contracts

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Blockade Games

5 min readMar 24, 2020

Due to the uncertain future of the financial environment, Blockade Games has added additional service offerings to their current product portfolio. In addition to game development and platform services, Blockade is now accepting contracted work for puzzle, game development, and marketing services.

The addition of these contract services is a part of a larger restructuring effort to attract new sources of revenue and decrease expenses in an unstable fundraising environment while continuing to build our highly anticipated game titles, including Neon District. An important part of this plan includes the reallocation of internal resources and continued vendor partnerships. For the time being, the Neon District development team will be composed of five members with one full-time Unity developer.

This adjustment also means that Blockade has about 15 very talented developers, designers, and artists available for a range of third-party projects to increase user engagement, education, and community development in the blockchain sector. Additionally CEO Marguerite deCourcelle and CTO Ben Heidorn will be available for consulting, marketing, development, consultation and project management.

For inquiries and consultations for our services please contact us at founders@neondistrict.io.

The CEO, Marguerite deCourcelle, is the internationally renowned inventor of “crypto puzzles,” artistic cryptographic puzzles and games that unlock cryptocurrency treasures such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital durable goods. She has built a brand under a long list of blockchain art and puzzle challenges. Marguerite thrives at the intersection of blockchain, art, and gaming.

The CTO, Ben Heidorn, The CTO, Ben Heidorn, leads the blockchain, architecture, and research development for all of Blockade’s projects. Prior to Blockade, Ben attended the Penn State Computer Science graduate program. Ben has 14 years of professional software engineering experience, and is an active contributor to open-source, including releasing a Decred wallet explorer and contributing to OpenSea’s ERC-1155 codebase.

About Blockade

Blockade Games is a leading blockchain video game development studio. The team has produced some of the longest-running experiences blending blockchain with interactive entertainment.

Blockade Games aims to on-board millions of new crypto enthusiasts by introducing them to real digital asset ownership with top-quality mainstream independent free-to-play game titles.

Using industry expertise in both game and blockchain development, Blockade is producing a stellar, new gaming experience in Neon District, their flagship video game franchise, that introduces mainstream players to blockchain with a seamless and engrossing user experience.

Alongside game development, they offer expertise and technical prowess for third-party game developers to leverage their free-to-play blockchain game tools and infrastructure. Our Developer Platform consolidates our entire technical stack and allows game studios to focus on building games for mainstream audiences.

Examples of Past Projects

The Experimental Ledger of Szabo
The Ledger of Szabo, created by Blockade Games, is an adventure game inspired by classic 8-bit video games. The player finds themselves stranded on an island while seeking out Bitcoin puzzles to solve. To escape, the player needs to find three magic keys to unlock the treasure and leave the island, with the journey taking them through a winding overworld and a perplexing dungeon filled with monsters, mazes, and puzzles.

This gaming application is also the first to successfully send a bitcoin lightning transaction to trigger an Ethereum smart contract. The bitcoin payment portal for the game is Lightning-compatible. Once the team at Blockade Games receives a paid invoice, they mint the NFTs directly to the player’s wallet, giving them the benefit of Bitcoin’s secondary layer and Ethereum’s ERC-721 standard for unique in-game collectibles.

Watch the preview trailer for Ledger of Szabo here.
Historical articles about LoS and development: https://medium.com/blockadegames/the-ledger-of-szabo-create-your-own-nft-in-game-character-3309897265b4
https://medium.com/blockadegames/the-ledger-of-szabo-gaming-with-lightning-network-and-ethereum-bb2259a211cd

The First-Ever Free to Play Blockchain Game: Plasma Bears

Read the in-depth article by Gary Vee about about historical Plasma Bears NFT game here since we’ve taken it down. Plasma Bears was meant to stress test the bottle-necks of free to play blockchain gaming.

About: Plasma Bears is a free to play Ethereum sidechain game about collecting, constructing, and adventuring. Plasma Bears is an experimental project — a fun, social game where players can easily trade, buy, and sell blockchain assets without having any prior knowledge of cryptocurrency. In fact, you can enjoy the full game experience without ever caring that blockchain powers the backend — it’s just part of the frictionless experience. Created by Blockade Games.

The Pineapple Arcade

The Pineapple Arcade may look like a dream-induced arcade of the 80s, but there’s more: the games, the furniture, and even the walls, hide puzzles and scavenger hunts leading to cryptocurrency prizes. The Arcade is free to play, and all puzzles are skill based. These puzzles will test your creative puzzle-solving mind!

Note: Pineapple Arcade is no longer operational as all puzzles have been solved.

Examples of Cryptocurrency Puzzles as a means of Viral Marketing and Educational Campaigns created by various groups including Blockade Games and friends of Blockade Games:

Blockade Games is Now Accepting Third-Party Development Contracts

Written by Marguerite deCourcelle