Meet Metapals on Tezos

As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, one of the things that I am most excited about Tezos in 2024 is the rapidly-growing Tezos gaming scene. With games like “Coinblast” (which has recently made DappRadar’s top 50 blockchain games list of blockchain games on DappRadar), or StarSymphony with its “Star Harvesting season” currently ongoing with hundreds of people playing the game, we can see that gaming has the potential to become one of the biggest use-cases for blockchains that are scalable like Tezos.

In this article, I want to cover Metapals, a recently announced game that will also run on Tezos. So let’s talk about Metapals!

What is Metapals? #

Metapals is a unique virtual pet game that operates as a Chrome browser extension, allowing users to interact with and nurture digital pets right from their computer screens.

Drawing inspiration from the classic Tamagotchi game, Metapals features pets with distinct personalities that evolve over time, learning and developing behaviors much like real pets.

Users are encouraged to take on the responsibility of caring for their pets, thereby fostering strong, emotional bonds akin to those formed with real-life pets.

The Metapals project was co-founded by Max Giammario (CEO), Daryl Lim (COO), and Tony Soekirman (CTO) and the full team already features 20+ (and counting) animators, illustrators, system designers, developers, and more.

So where do we start and how do we get our first companion? Let’s dive right into it.

How to claim your first companion #

To start off, lets download and install the Metapals extension for our Chrome (or other Chromium-based) browser. Always make sure that you’re downloading it from the official source!

After we’ve downloaded the extension, we’ll need to create an account and verify our email to get started. This is where our journey begins!

On the next page, we collect the “Essence” we are given by clicking on them. Essence is one of the in-game currencies and it is used to adopt our first companion.

Once collected, we click “Adopt my Metapal”.

At this point, we can finally adopt our companion! Our three choices are the “Shiba Inu”, the “Tabby Cat”, or the “Bunny”. Each one of them cost 250 Essence to adopt. As far as I can tell, there are no differences in skills or attributes between them - simply choose the one you like the most! I’m a dog person, so I went with the Shiba Inu.

Once we select our companion, we will be prompted to name it (I named mine “Tezonian”) and then go through a short guide on how to call, hide, feed, pet, dress, and generally do all the things we can do with our companion, including leveling it up and having fun!

That’s it - we now have our first Metapal companion!

I can’t help but buzz with excitement for what’s next in the Tezos gaming world. Metapals is just the start, and with the Tezos scene heating up, who knows what cool games will pop up next?

I’m really looking forward to seeing all the quirky and fun features Metapals and other future games will bring to the table. So, what’s stopping you? Jump into Metapals, grab your digital pet, and get a first-hand peek at the fun side of Tezos gaming now!