Here you can see the asset extraction process, which uses an external program available for all desktop platforms. It decrypts a so called XCI file, which is one of the file formats for Nintendo Switch games, and then parses and rebundles the resulting asset file into a TAR file with extracted textures in PNG format.

Here is a short demonstration of some early footage of the game:

What's special about the game is that there is an integration with a blockchain called NEAR Protocol. NEAR Protocol is a climate neutral Proof of Stake blockchain, which allows running WebAssembly Smart Contracts (it's like a programmable decentralized database). Since many people are extremely new to blockchain gaming, I'd like to give away some NEAR tokens for free. You have to complete the following tasks in order to get your link. This link can be used to create a web-based wallet on the NEAR Protocol blockchain. You will receive 0.1 NEAR with the link, which is ~0.8$. By using such a link, you can avoid creating an account on a centralized exchange like Binance and go through their KYC (Know Your Customer) process.

FAQ

• Are you serious? Isn't this free money? This sounds super scammy.

Yes, I'm serious. Yes, this is free money (~0.8$). I can do this, because I got a grant of 8k NEAR from Humanguild. They have been specializing in bootstrapping gaming projects on NEAR Protocol and I have been one of the first projects to get a grant. I want to reach out to people new to blockchain gaming and help onboarding them.

• Can we already play the game?

Kind of. You would need a copy of Super Mario Maker 2 to extract your assets. You can visit the web app here.

• What about the link? How are they generated? Can I get more than one?

You can only get one link per person. The link is generated via a project called NEARDrop

• Somehow Twitter is showing me all errors, even though I followed everyone

Twitter has very drastic rate limiting, so you should not press F5 too often. Otherwise you will have to wait a couple of minutes.

• Why did you decide to build a blockchain game?

Blockchain gaming is a very new topic, but it's emerging right now. There have been very succesfull blockchain games like Axie Infinity , which use a mechanism called play to earn. To explain it briefly, play to earn rewards players by giving them tokens, which are stored on the blockchain. The game can do that, because a token is basically just a value stored on the blockchain. A Smart Contract would be called that can alter the state on the chain and generate tokens for a specific wallet address. The user who owns that wallet can then swap his tokens for other cryptocurrencies or he can move them to a centralized exchange and sell them for real money.

The token given by the play to earn game has value depending on its usage. Most tokens are required in the game to unlock or buy several things. It is really just an in-game currency, which is instead stored on a blockchain. This results in a massive shift, that many call true ownership. What it allows you is to transfer your game currency and do whatever you want with it. It is no longer stored on the game servers and the game allows you to show your balance, but it's the other way around. The user gives allowance to the app to access his wallet to check the balance.

Simply put, play to earn connects an in-game economy to the real world economy. The concept fascinated my this much, that I decided to launch my own blockchain gaming project.

• Great! I want to learn more about Shroom Kingdom. Does it also have its own token?

Yes, we launched a token called SHRM and you can earn it by playing or building levels (not yet, because we're not live). Please read our whitepaper for more information.