Blockchain social sim Today has announced that its 4th closed playtest, Luma’s Call, is coming on August 26th for players who have the PIONEER role or are an Ancient Seed holder. If you don’t fall into either category, then you have a couple of days to participate in a CARV event that may let you play for free, though you’ll need some BNB to mint a CARV ID on opBNB.

What’s Included in Luma’s Call?

The key part of this upcoming test session is the introduction of the in-game AI character engine, ‘Dreamia’. Those who played the previous prototype will notice significant improvements to AI-powered NPCs in this 4th version thanks to the new character engine. Dreamia is designed to enable the creation of smart interactive characters, and you can see what that looks like in a development update video from last month, but also in this keynote at NFC Lisbon from the game’s CEO and co-founder, Michael O'Connor. Essentially, among the enhancements introduced is contextual awareness, meaning that in this upcoming prototype, the characters will be aware of the changes you make and provide feedback to tell you what they like and don’t like. For example, if you ask a character what they think of the new clothing you customized them with, they may say that they don’t like the boots, and would prefer some different ones with a specific color. They’ll even tell if you if they’re happy with the details of the house you’ve built them, as well as if the house location is one to their liking.

Next to contextual awareness, Dreamia brings in long-term memory improvements, so your island residents will now be able to properly recall your previous conversations with them, using that data from earlier to answer your question based on what they remember. These AI-driven characters are now also said to have deep personality, meaning they can provide insightful answers to your specific questions, such as questions about their liking of houses with lots of windows. This means that these characters can now be full of depth and have their own varied tastes, desires and knowledge to make each of them stand out, creating interactive, generative storytelling and gameplay. All of this is backed by procedural animation that allows NPCs to emotionally react in real-time. In a reply to one of the tweets from the community, the developers even tease that these characters also have the potential to even talk to each other, so it will be interesting to see how complex these AIs can truly go once the new prototype goes live. Overall, it looks like the $5 million raised by Today in April this year is gradually coming to fruition.

Next to this promising new character engine, the developers are also said to be bringing “huge advances” to gameplay while delivering a “much richer and more vibrant world” for this 4th playtest. In the lead up to this prototype, it seems that the developers have been tweeting WIP updates every Wednesday to give the community a glimpse at some of the new features and upgrades to look forward to once the prototype opens to eligible players. Next to all the features of Dreamia and its procedural animation, there will also be an AI assistant called Ponga by your side, as well as plenty of new ‘toys' such as a new gameplay tool called the Echo Blaster that will give you another way to mine resources. This Echo Blaster looks set to be crucial for mining larger resources, which could lead to unlocking secret new areas and finding rare goodies. These secret locations look set to be found in a variety of diverse new Biomes that the team has been working on the past few months.

How to Participate

To have a chance at participating in the Luma’s Call closed playtest, you will need to follow the steps in a campaign hosted on modular data layer CARV, with the link for it included in this tweet. If you do, you may end up being one of the lucky chosen testers to win a share of a $1000 USDT reward pool. One of the steps involves minting a CARV ID on opBNB. At the time of writing, it looks like you need about $1.30 in BNB plus enough BNB to cover gas fees. After this step is done, the next steps should be relatively simple to complete, but not everyone will be picked. The developers are looking for applicants that they believe are the “right kinds of testers” for their blockchain game, making it important to connect gaming accounts and likely have a good enough PC for a better chance at gaining entry.

Ancient Seed holders and those with a PIONEER Discord role can apply using an Alphabot form linked in the same tweet. Ancient Seeds are part of the game’s genesis collection designed to generate islands in the Web3 title, with rarer seeds generating islands that look more unique. These NFTs can be staked on their staking platform The Garden to gain SEED Points used to upgrade the rarity of the seed. The Ethereum-based collection can be found on OpenSea and Magic Eden with a current floor price of 1.13 ETH (~$3675). PIONEERS are Discord members with a special role that signifies their early support and playtesting. Applications for this role may still open from time to time in the future.