Status Report #003

New updates and improvements to the Genoverse

Below are some of the items the Genopets team has worked on over the past few weeks. We’re pulling back the curtain to show you, fellow Genovians, what goes into making a game.

Note: most items below, unless noted, are not final. Many things that we share in Status Reports will include early renderings, prototypes, or explorations so please keep that in mind when sharing thoughts.

It’s alive — Private Beta released!

Private Beta kicked off with an initial group of beta testers last week. Huge shoutout to all testers and our incredible devs. Keep reading to see some of the things we’ve improved with the community’s help.

From day one we have been breaking conventional gaming norms. In a typical game, you wait 3–4 years after a game is announced before anything playable ends up in the community’s hands. It was just 6 months ago that we shipped our first Genopet minting demo, for players to experience an idea for a new type of game, followed by the Gensis Genopet hatching game we released in November.

All this to say, we have never lost sight of the end goal. We are dedicated to building a game that inspires the world to stay active through nurturing and evolving Genopets.

As a company and a team we are ambitious. In our goals and deadlines. Ambition cuts both ways. In the short run it may cause us to fall short of our immediate targets, but in the grander scheme, it propels us to achieve something far greater than we could have imagined.

We won’t stop.

Checkout the latest trailer drop — New beta video 💫

Our new trailer dropped alongside the beta rollout. Get a peak inside what the Genoverse has in store as the physical and the digital collide.

Who’s ready to run? — Leaderboard in development

Over the coming weeks, we want to help beta players with some external motivation. Soon you’ll be able to see a leaderboard that includes who in the Genoverse has banked the most steps.

• Pets can dance! Animations completed for various body types

• Designed lore art for the game
  

• What could a maxed-out Genopet look like? Our team drafted initial concepts:

• Produced initial ambient music for habitats

• Designed full-colored portals

• Created structures for various habitats

• Completed high poly models for refineries

Huge shoutout to the beta testers supplying feedback and bugs. Below are some of the fixes we pushed with their help.

• Fixed earned XP text being cut off
• Improved crash reporting experience
• Support for a wider range of Android phones
• Fixed steps going up during banking instead of down
• Made register for beta button clickable for various device sizes on the homepage of genopets.me

As a reminder, this is just a small sample of what we’ve been up to over the past few weeks. There’s a lot more in store before open beta, so follow along on Discord and Twitter to stay in the loop.

Private Beta FAQ

With beta testing kicking off just over a week ago, we thought it would be helpful to provide a quick list of FAQs to address some common questions we’ve been receiving from the community about the private beta.

I received a confirmation email. Does this mean I am registered?

We sent registration confirmations out via email to everyone who has successfully registered for the private beta. That being said, there are about ~250 of you that have unsubscribed from our email list so we are unable to send you emails. 🤷

So if I registered I’m on the list?

Yes — if you signed up at https://genopets.me/beta, you should have seen the confirmation screen when you completed registration. You can always log in at https://genopets.me/beta again to verify whether you’ve registered or not.

Wen Beta?

Phase 1A of Beta is happening as you read this. If you haven’t been keeping up with the announcements channel on our Discord, we’ve been adding players to the app since it was released on 1/22/2022. They’ve been busy doing an outstanding job supplying feedback and reporting bugs to make the game better for you and all future Genovians.

Wen Beta for me?

All Genesis Genopet holders, hodlers, and DNA members will be invited to participate in Phase 1A of the Genopets Beta. Genopets will be in Private Beta for several phases through Q1 and Q2. With each update, we will be sending out more invites until all Genesis Genopet Holders, all DNA members, select guild scholars, and select GENE staker have had the opportunity to experience the Beta.

If you don’t have a Genesis Genopet, don’t worry. We will soon be allowing new players to generate a baby Genopet.

We love that you’re excited, and we want you to be. And we’re all excited too! However, if you’re stressing out about trying to get into the Beta, remember that our focus is wellness and that’s just counterproductive. So, don’t worry! Go start training to get ready for that Genopet grind, kick back, and relax because your time will come. :)

Trust us when we say that we hear your requests, and as much as we’d love to let everyone in right away, with over 200,000 people signing up, there has to be a process to this. And, just in case anyone has forgotten, there is no gameplay advantage to being in testing the Beta early. In fact, the more time that passes, the more exciting the Beta experience. Remember that patience is a virtue!

How many people are getting in at a time?

There’s no set number of people being invited per batch. However, for context, almost 40k people have completed registration, and more than 200k people have started the sign-up process. That’s a lot of people! So, for now, we are inviting people on a rolling basis — a pace suitable for active development. As we release new updates to the game every few days, It’s important to remember that this is a beta test, not the actual game.

Will invites start going out faster?

Absolutely! Everything has to start slow as we test and improve each build. And once we get the major features of this phase implemented and issues resolved (from the latest testing with small batches of participants), we will start rolling out much faster, to a lot more people at a time, with Genesis Genopet holders, DNA members, select GENE stakers and select Guild Scholars having priority.

How is beta testing going?

With this small group of beta testers, we’ve gotten over 200 issues, ideas, and bugs reported in just the past 10 days. They’ve been breaking everything. We love it.

Imagine if there were 1,000s of testers? How would we possibly address that much feedback meaningfully? We want to build this game with you, so we take your feedback seriously.

So who is getting in the Beta now?

We have specific criteria we are looking for based on survey answers. You can probably guess it: Genesis Genopet holders with Android devices, who expressed interest in staying active and wanting to experience a game today with fewer features, were some of the first to play.

What can I expect when playing?

If you participate in Phase 1A, you can expect a badass step counter and an ability to bond with your Genopet. Remember, this is just the first phase of a multiphase beta. The Beta will be ongoing for a while.

What needs to happen before you invite a significant number of players? What’s on the immediate roadmap?

• iOS App
• Leaderboard
• Personal move goals
• Updated bank button
• Onboarding screens
• Naming your Genopet
• Minting baby pets

I’m excited to get moving, but I’m not in Beta yet. What can I do?

Join the #fitness-motivation channel on discord. The community has done a fantastic job of encouraging each other to share their goals and get moving. We’re personally very proud of the Genovians in that channel and encourage everyone to get in on the action and start training.

Okay for real, when can I play?

If you have any additional questions, head to our discord so teammates, mods, and other Genovians can help.

We appreciate your patience and support as we get this early version of the game in the first few player’s hands for testing.

And if you haven’t yet, head to https://genopets.me/beta to get on the waitlist and check out our Private Beta trailer we dropped for the launch if you missed it:

See you in the Genoverse!

— Team Genopets