Variance: Echoes of the Past

A Portal into the Realmverse

6 min readApr 30, 2024

Introduction

A little over a year ago, we began brainstorming of ways for people to experience the Realmverse in a whole new way. We wanted them to explore the depths of our lore and be immersed in our amazing artwork.

Today, we proudly announce — Variance: Echoes of the Past.

Watch the Official Teaser on YouTube
https://youtu.be/X-zvNBFfhBg

Gameplay

Variance is an Action Roguelite + Metroidvanian powered by a digital economy. Explorer new levels, master special attacks and discover her legacy.

Roguelite + Metroidvanian

We are taking inspiration from the high-risk gameplay of Roguelites like Hades and the story-telling of Metroidvanians like Hollow Knight to fulfill our objectives:

Progression: Our top priority is to provide a progression system that makes players feel accomplished and driven to continue unlocking the next skill. No pay to win here. It is fully skill based.
Replayability: Roguelites promote replayability out of the box but we want to expand the genre and give players a more diverse experience with each run. Our aim is for the game to evolve along side the player so that each run through gives players a challenge they haven’t seen before.
Immersion: Never underestimate the power of immersion. Metroidvanians do this really well with their environments and story-telling. Along with the Roguelite elements of gameplay, we’ll have a intriguing story that unfolds based on our ever expanding Realmverse lore.

Over the next several months, we’ll be sharing more details about gameplay as we get ready for our Closed Alpha later this year.

Challenging Enemies Ahead

We’ve been busy creating a library of enemies for you to encounter. Each level has a unique aesthetic and a variety of enemies with new attacks.

You’ll have fun figuring out their different attack styles and adjusting your gameplay to defeat them.

Anime Style Battles

We’ll be taking cues from the Anime world to bring you immersive battles that keeps you coming back for more. Hit powerful combos and sit in awe at the jaw dropping visuals each one creates.

Our Inspiration

Visual

Variance is heavily influenced by the art style of the Realmverse. Our Lead Artist produced a beautiful collection of hand-drawn Anime characters that makes up the Adventurers of the Void collection on Arbitrum.

We’ll be using this collection’s aesthetic to inspire characters, enemies, environments and much more.

Lore

Our lore is community owned. We partnered with Spire to create a set of Genesis texts that make up the basis for our lore. From there, anyone can contribute to the next chapter in the story through a voting process.

Spire harnesses community creativity to transform gaming narratives. It merges blockchain technology and passionate communities to provide Web3 games with captivating stories.

We take into consideration the lore being created by community members as we grow our ecosystem.

Innovative Tech Stack

Realm Studios, in partnership with Big Beam Games, is pioneering an innovative tech stack behind Variance. Here’s a small glimpse into what we’re cooking.

Physics-Based and Fully Deterministic Engine

Expect a gameplay experience that’s consistent across devices. The physics-based world reacts the same way every time, ensuring fairness and predictability in gameplay.

Mastering how the game’s physics operates allows you to strategize and execute plans with precision, making each run both a challenge and a learning experience.

Zero-Trust Gaming & Verification

Competitive gameplay and leaderboards are rampant with bots and cheating. We’ve created a level playing field, thanks to our zero-trust gaming system. Every session is verified for authenticity, safeguarding against cheating and hacks.

We’ll be exploring Eigenlayer AVS to help us decentralize verification.

Onchain Identity

Your progress goes beyond the game — it becomes part of your onchain identity. All those hours spent playing through the game will yield onchain progress and rewards.

This elevates the authenticity of your gaming experience and allows you to own a piece of the game. Forever preserving your accomplishments onchain.

Universal Gameplay and Sharing

Our game engine is designed to be independent of rendering hardware, guaranteeing uniform gameplay outcomes on any device. This means:

Consistent gameplay across devices: Your strategies and skills yield identical results, whether you’re playing on a mobile device or a high-end gaming rig.
Share gameplay: Variance allows you to effortlessly share gameplay without recording software. Just share a link with your friends.

AI-Adaptive Gameplay

We’re exploring features like adaptive difficulty settings and AI learning from player patterns, aiming to create a dynamic and responsive gaming experience.

Auto-scaling Difficulty: Scale your difficulty based on your runs to challenge you or keep your experience at the level you want.
Bot & Exploit Monitoring: Flag a run for review to check if it was submitted by a bot or if someone exploited a bug.
Accelerated Game Design: Iterate through game design updates quickly by check how challenging an average player would react to balance changes/new encounters.

Powered by Realm’s Economy

Realm is our onchain world-building and exploration game. It is built on our gaming protocol running since Sept 2021 with over 1.3M transactions to date. At the heart of the economy are Realms and Adventurers. All propelled by a singular catalyst, $ANIMA.

As a player of Variance, you’ll be given the chance to start building your onchain identity in the Realmverse.

Onchain Primer

Variance players will get exposure to onchain content and rewards. For those that are interested, they’ll experience a smooth transition into our onchain game.

Our aim is to enable seamless activity between Variance and Realm that includes:

Achievements/Progression/Leaderboards
Adventurers, Realms, $ANIMA
LootBoxes and other item drops
User-generated content
AI-generated content

We believe that Variance will be a huge primer to onboard players to Realm.

Early Access

Go to www.playvariance.com to get started 🚀

If you are a content creator and are interested in Early Access, contact us today. Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/realmverse

Referral Program

Share referrals with your friends and increase your chances of being part of the Closed Alpha! Every 10 Referrals gives you an extra chance at getting in! Here’s what you could win:

Alpha Battle Pass: Access to Closed Alpha
Early access to Realm Merch
Chance to win 10x Epic LootBoxes
1/1 Adventurer of the Void Variant
1/1 Marauder Variant

Get started today!
www.playvariance.com

Conclusion

We are beyond excited to share this with everyone! We’ll be releasing more details over the next several months including gameplay footage, developer updates, concept art and much more!

Join us

To find out more, join our Discord and start chatting with the community.

Join us: https://discord.gg/realmverse
Follow Variance: https://twitter.com/playvariance
Follow Realm Studios: https://twitter.com/rlmverse

(♾️,🎮)