Hey community! Muumiopappa here.
We promised in the Habbo NFT 2022 roadmap (Q3) that we would share the basic details of the Habbo X alpha and how that will look. So today I’m happy to be bringing to you that, as well as a rough schedule for all stages of Habbo X’s development. Therefore, this blog will effectively be the first working version of the Habbo X roadmap.
PLEASE NOTE: the following is a rough idea of the Habbo X roadmap and we will keep adding to it and adjusting as we see fit.
PRE-ALPHA — Q3
For our birthday we wanted to give Habbo Avatar owners a quick sneak peek behind the curtain and open up Habbo X (pre-alpha) for 1 week. The team has been hard at work with the new hotel and we now have an internal working development version with the basic functionality.
Right now, the plan is to open the pre-alpha on Wednesday September 28th. We’ll be providing details about how avatar owners can access it early this coming week.
In the past months, most of the team’s time has been spent working with under the hood stuff, enabling web3 components and making everything ready so we can develop all the crucial gameplay features. We are at the stage where we can start adding, improving and fine tuning features and start changing the visual look of the game but, for now, here’s what you can expect from the pre-alpha:
Pre-alpha features
- Register and login with your Metamask wallet.
- NFT speech bubbles in-game.
- Ability to choose a name for your avatar, and if you own an ENS or NameTag, use that too.
- Browse automatically created Habbo NFT Communities, for collections to find other Habbos with similar collection interests to yours. Currently, Habbo Avatars, Habbo Portraits and our collabs (Metakey, MVHQ, CyberKongz and Cool Cats) have their own communities.
(In the future we aim to have community chats, community DMs and other features related to NFT communities in Habbo X.)
- Revamped public room access — users will always be able to enter because of what is known as room instancing. When the instance gets full, a new public room instance is created so that more people can spend time in that room.
- One new Habbo X exclusive public room. More to come later.
- Ability to view your NFT credits in-game.
- Ability to add friends and DM people on your friends list.
Rooms
- We aim to have a different look and feel for Habbo X compared to Habbo itself. We have one new public room and are working on a few more that will be added later.
- The quality of the room competition was really high so we added a few of those Community designed rooms to this release. We may keep them, update them or remove them for the next release.
PLEASE NOTE, for those of you who choose to play pre-alpha:
- We ask you to bear in mind that — as this is our pre-alpha — more features will be added later on in the year. What you will see here is not the end-product but an extremely valuable first step as we go through the iterative process in further defining Habbo X, fleshing out the new hotel with the community in mind. During the pre-alpha we will have a Discord channel open for you where you can pass on feedback to the team!
- Your participation is valuable to us and — to say thank you for your participation — we will reward everyone who played during pre-alpha (reward will be sent closer to Alpha 1 — more info on that later.)
MODERATION
One question that has been asked regularly is whether Habbo X will support all nine of our supported languages. The answer to this is YES IT WILL. We want the entire Habbo community to be able to speak their own language in Habbo X. This is a firm commitment.
However, for the pre-alpha at least and potentially some of the alpha tests that come after it, we kindly ask you to speak in English. We’re still putting plans together for exactly how Habbo X will be moderated and building the necessary tech that will allow us to support multiple languages. Until then, it’s only possible for us to moderate English.
To help prevent toxicity and bad behaviour, we’ll have a manual moderation set up where you’ll be able to log help reports in-game.
ALPHA 1 — Q4 TBC
We are aiming to open Habbo X Alpha 1 in Q4 this year. However, I want to emphasise that Alpha 1 will only happen once we’re happy with the look of Habbo X, as well as having some additional features in. After pre-alpha, the biggest addition will be an updated look and feel, as well as NFT rooms. Overall, the goal is to enable room building and give NFT room owners enough furni to build all kinds of cool rooms.
Some facts about Alpha 1:
Who will be able to play Alpha 1?: The Alpha 1 version of Habbo X will only be available to those of you who have a Habbo Avatar or a Habbo NFT Room. (We plan to do the first NFT room drop this year.)
When will Alpha 1 be available?: The current target is Q4 but we’ll keep you updated. We will not release Alpha 1 until we are happy with the features and the look of the game.
Why is Alpha 1 important?: Assuming we are able to get NFT rooms included here, Alpha 1 gives every Habbo Avatar holder and Habbo NFT Room holder the chance to be the first ones to try out room building in Habbo X. As room building will be one of the core features in Habbo X, we feel it is important to give early access for the community as that will help us debug the game and the feature, get your valuable feedback and suggestions and, overall, help us fine tune the experience.
Main new features in Alpha 1:
- We will enable basic avatar looks. The looks can be updated using NFT Clothes.
- Room building enabled for NFT Room holders and Habbo Avatar holders.
- A large collection of furniture available for room building. If you have suggestions about which furni and furni lines to include, we would love to hear it!
- Updated look and feel which includes new public rooms.
Below is our current roadmap for Habbo X after Alpha 1. Please note that while this is in the order we aim to add the following features in, this list and the order of things will most definitely change based on your feedback over the coming weeks and months.
ALPHA 2
As the aim for Alpha 1 is to deliver room building tools with NFT rooms, the focus of Alpha 2 is to start increasing the size of the player base in Habbo X that can enjoy the rooms the community has built after the Alpha 1 release.
- We will introduce the community hubs to Alpha 2 and allow our NFT collab holders to access this stage.
- We will also allow our Habbo Portrait owners entry into Habbo X.
- Default rooms are small rooms each user has in Habbo X. These rooms will have very limited functionality but will give an introduction to room building. We aim to enable these rooms for Alpha 2.
- We will release the first earning features latest in Alpha 2, hopefully even before then. Ideally, this includes ways to reward players for participating in Alpha, and ways for room owners to reward room visitors/game participants, and rewarding room owners for room visitors.
- In-game currency — either NFT Credits or an ERC-20 token.
ALPHA 3
Alpha 3 will focus on improving the room navigator as we think it is crucial that users are able to find the best rooms. Additionally, in most projects the location of your NFT land or room matters and this is something we want to include in our NFT rooms as well. Therefore, the main addition will be a new room navigator (until then we have to get by with the repurposed old navigator).
- We are aiming to add a new room navigator.
- Social features for Communities, including Community chat and DMs.
- We want to update the user profiles by including social media contacts, NFTs, NFT badges and other NFT related features.
- We want to add more NFT collections that are able to access Habbo X. We will look for new collaborations to add and have open houses where we open up the game for a short period of time to everyone during this stage.
BETA
Note that we may keep doing Alpha releases after Alpha 3 or closed Beta releases. We will move to Public Beta when we feel comfortable opening the game to everyone. This will include player progression and fun mini-games. We don’t want anyone to get bored in Habbo X!
- We aim to add a mini-game or two that will drop rewards.
- It is important that players have goals and targets. Therefore, player progression is one of the key features to give everyone a reason to come back. In Habbo X, the progression will also be used for rewarding: the higher level you are, the higher multiplier you get for rewards. We are aiming to add the first version for progression for the Public Beta.
After Public Beta release
After the Public Beta launch we will keep adding features and aim to improve the overall experience.
- Beta 2 will keep adding more ways to earn rewards.
- We will add room blueprints, NFT renting and an in-game marketplace. (See this blog for more information about room blueprints)
- We will also add social media furni for Twitter, Discord, etc. (See this blog for more information about social media furni and associated integrations)
We will be taking into account user feedback and fixes from the early development stages, as well as also focusing on user retention. We want to make Habbo X attractive — not just for current and old Habbos but for everyone! When we have accomplished everything we have here, we have even bigger plans for reaching a much wider mass of players than Habbo has ever had. I don’t feel comfortable sharing the exact plans yet but I want to highlight that we are not done when we have these features implemented. This is just the beginning!
WEN?!
And for the question of wen Alpha 2/3, Beta, etc: wen it’s ready. Same goes for “Wen token?!?!?!” — It is a complex issue because — as far as we know — we are the first publicly traded company working in this area. There are tons of complex issues that need to be addressed both from legal but also from an accounting perspective. Luckily, we have the NFT Credits already that can be used as the Habbo X currency until we are able to release the ERC-20 token. We will look to improve the usability of NFT Credits latest for Alpha 2 if we don’t have the ERC-20 token by then.
RECAP
We will open a pre-alpha version of Habbo X for a week so Avatar owners can see where we are at currently.
We aim to have Alpha 1 out in Q4 this year. However, it will be out when it is ready. The main focus of Alpha 1 is room building and the look and feel of the game.
Alpha 2 aims to introduce more tools for room building, especially for rewarding. We want to have the first reward features released in Alpha 2.
Alpha 3 will focus on room navigation, community social features and profiles. We need to make the room discovery as easy as possible and wandering around the hotel fun and engaging. In addition, we know that the user profiles are a very important part of self expression so we want to give that feature lots of love too.
Between Alpha releases and the Public Beta we may add some additional features. I am well aware that this list isn’t comprehensive and there are a lot of both minor and major features missing from this list.
When we get to Public Beta it is important to have a reason to play and come back — especially if you are new to Habbo. Therefore, we will focus on player progression and mini-games.
After Public Beta we will start adding the supporting features like blueprints and social media integrations.
Again, this is our current priority order. If you consider this being off or if you think we are missing important features, let us know. We are taking a look at the progress and the priorities often and juggle the order.
The last few months in the crypto and NFT space have been tough. For us and for our project though this is the perfect time to build. This is the time that separates the real projects from rugs. I am very excited for what the future has in store and can’t wait to hear your feedback, ideas and comments!
