Hello all

A month ago, I released v1 of my game Satoshi Strike (here) where you can compete online against other players in a tank battle arena and win real sats. It was a first draft and still a bit rough around the edges. I got a lot of valuable feedback here (thank you!) which led me to redesign the game from ground up. Yesterday, I released version 2 of it and hope you'll like it.

But first, thank you so much! I dumped the database of the old version yesterday and scrolled through the logs and could not believe it. You guys have been playing the whole month. During the month, I sometimes looked at the website and saw only myself online. I thought okay, after the novelty wore off, people moved on to the next thing. But no, it seems that some of you have kept playing. Probably organizing games with friends off-band (since there are not enough players for now to be able to just go online and always find someone to play with) and then meeting online in Satoshi Strike to battle it out. Thanks so much! It really feels nice to have made something that resonates.

Alright, what changed:

The first version relied on a stable websocket connection that had to be kept alive at all times. If you lost connection during a game or while in a waiting room, you would not be able to reconnect to the same session and have to start and pay again to join. That was definitely not optimal. In the new version, there are user accounts (don't worry, no mail or KYC required ;D but be fast to secure your nickname before someone else does). That allows for persistent sessions (i.e. reconnects are not a problem anymore).

User accounts also make it possible to have a wallet inside the game. That means you don't have to pay before every game and withdraw after every game, disrupting the flow. You simply fund the wallet once, play as long as you like, all deductions and earnings are debited and credited to your wallet as you play, and finally you can withdraw again to self-custody.

One big problem was that you did not see whether someone else was already in a waiting room before joining it. Coupled with the fact, that you had to pay before entering a waiting room, this would lead to you being forced to wait in an empty room for a long time if no one was showing up or otherwise give up the fee you paid to enter. There was no refund mechanism for this case.

Now, this is much better. You can see the current state of all waiting rooms before entering them. When you enter a waiting room, the entrance fee is only blocked in your wallet but not deducted. You can leave the waiting room at any time and at no cost. Only when a waiting room fills up and the game really starts, is the fee deducted from your wallet.

Instead of just 1v1 arenas, I added more game modes (different fee levels, more players, etc.). This can be easily extended. If you want a 10v10 arena, let me know :D Also, I added two free arenas for practice. One is 1v1 where you can play and train with a friend without risking any sats. The other free arena is with a bot that I programmed (not extremely good, but okay for practice) that you can practice with at any time.

Also, the new version is playable on mobile as this has been a request by many. Instead of using keyboard and mouse, a joystick is displayed on the screen and you tap the screen to shoot.

While version 2 is a significant improvement over version 1, I do want to emphasize that it is still a game in beta and that you should not leave larger sums on the wallet. While the risk of losing it is very low with the new architecture (also everything can be reconstructed from logs, if something should happen), it is still not considered to be a stable release.

With the disclaimer aside, I am looking forward to hearing from you and have fun! :)