CryptoGaming: Hedgies! 🦔 (NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain)

Hello everyone! So I finally have some time free here (thanks to new job, I've been busy and have had to stick to a strict bed time and everything... le sigh) so I thought I'd see if I can get out a post again.

All thanks to my friend @sugarfix, I discovered these cute little guys on the Ethereum blockchain. Hedgies! Think cryptokitties, except with hedgehogs (which are arguably cuter! ;P), and you can do more with them... :slightly_smiling_face:

Once you sign up (click here to sign up with my referral link!) you get one free Hedgie. Hedgies are NFTs (non-fungible ERC-721 tokens) on the Ethereum blockchain that are unique in that each one corresponds to a unique HEX color code. Which means that there are only 16,777,216 Hedgies in existence!

And I am the proud owner of 3 of them already! I started with my free one and didn't think I would buy any, but when I discovered they corresponded uniquely to HEX codes, I couldn't help myself. I'll explain more closer to the end of the post.

For now, let me explain how the game works.

Once you have signed up, you will get a free Hedgie of a random color. The color isn't only for looks: Each uniquely colored Hedgie comes with a unique set of attributes which affect its performance in the game.

The first four represent four elements... Water, Fire, Earth and Air.
The second four represent four traits... Luck, Prudence, Intelligence and Charm.

Here you can see one of my Hedgie's stats all lined up:

And at the bottom, you'll see an Energy bar. Energy is used up by your Hedgies when you send them on Journeys to Kingdoms both which I'll tell you about soon.

So what do these attributes do? Well, the four elements affect how well your Hedgie does in corresponding lands (Kingdoms) while they are on a journey. So, Earth helps performance in the Forest Kingdom, Fire in the Desert Kingdom, Air in the Mountain Kingdom and Water in the Wetlands Kingdom.

The four traits affect different things. Luck affects how often your Hedgie will find collectibles and consumables. Prudence helps your Hedgie find gear, apparently (gear has not yet been implemented). Intelligence helps them find resources (earth, water, fire, crystals and wood) and Charm helps you find Curios, the in-game token.

Kingdoms and Journeys

As mentioned, there are 4 kingdoms.

The whole crux of the game is to send your Hedgies on Journeys to these lands in search of all sorts of goodies. They return with a variety of resources, curiocoins, consumables and experience points.

Consumables are different rareties of berries and other objects which temporarily give a chosen Hedgie a boost in something:

Resources are used to construct furniture in your house (see below). Xp is used to level up your Hedgie.

And Curicoins can be spent with a selection of business partners. (You can get a cellphone for 25000 Curios!)

But journeying to these far off, exciting places takes a toll on your Hedgies! They come back tired and need to recover energy if you want to send them anywhere again. (The Energy bar I mentioned above). Your Hedgies start off with a recovery rate of 5 energy per hour, but this can be increased by adding furniture to your house, and apparently later, they'll be able to equip gear that will help in this regard too.

The House

The Hedgie house is almost as cute as they are... Here is mine...:

As you can see, all I have built so far is a fireplace. It gives an extra 0.28 energy every hour, so my Hedgies now recover 5.28 energy every hour when they are not on a journey. In order to increase that, I need to get more resources (which Hedgies find on their travels) and build more furniture.

There are all sorts of things (heater, bookshelf, water-basin, etc) available.

And that's it really. Send your Hedgies off to find you goodies, let them rest, and improve their house with the goodies they bring back. Level them up as they gain experience so that they get better at bringing back goodies. And so on. I guess that's the tl;dr ... ;P

But hold on, what about buying them?

Well, so, as I said, at first I was content to use my free Hedgie only. But then I realised what it meant to have Hedgies correspond to unique HEX color codes...: It is possible to have really unique Hedgies! The first few I tried were unfortunately already taken, probably by the developers themselves =P ... (#60061e and #c0ffee for example) ...

I searched online for all sorts of words that can be created with HEX code and there are quite a few... But nothing that screamed Ooohh, someone might pay a pretty penny for that Hedgie one day.

Until I stopped thinking words and turned to numbers. I thought to myself, "What is the most famous number? The most unique?" ... And then, boom, it hit me: pi! ... So I quickly checked and indeed, Hedgie HEX code #314159 was available! =D I snatched it up quickly for 0.036 Ethereum (just under 10 USD at the time).

After that, I wanted more... I went through all the HEX words again and decided, Ok, #c0ffee is already taken so I guess I'll settle for #decaff .. And yay, it was available =) Plus, #decaff is really high in the Mountain attribute, an added bonus.

Here are my 3 Hedgies, all three of them a few minutes away from returning from their long 12-hour journeys. I can't wait to see what goodies they bring back!

Oh! It looks like they are back already... As you can see here, you can allow the site to send you notifications. Useful if you're timing things carefully:

So! ... Whaddya say? Why not get a free Hedgie? It doesn't take much time at all out of your day and it's one extra way to earn some crypto that might be worth a lot one day =)