Gaming crash lands on Nostr! - Nostrasia Hackathon Pitch

Demo 📺

Value Proposition ✨

What if you could like a game on Coracle and then it shows up in your collection on a nostr gaming app? What if you could comment or zap a game on Amethyst after saving that game in that nostr gaming app the night before? What if you could see a review of a game on a Habla, and then hit the link to play it right away in the browser? These things can now be made possible with Crash Glow!

Gaming has never been truly integrated into the web’s social layer. You could tie your Xbox account to Microsoft, you can link your Steam or Epic games account to Discord, but these games have always been locked in the walled garden of their respective stores.

But with Crash Glow and Nostr, that all changes! Games are now kind 1 events. If you publish them on Crash Glow, not only can you like, zap, and comment on them in different apps, you can also keep all of that data and history with you even if you decide to use another gaming client as long as they are also building on this new foundation for gaming on Nostr.

Broad Innovation 🚀

Crash Glow is a gaming app, but it also represents a novel approach to publishing a game to Nostr. In order to post and retrieve games as kind 1 events, Arkinox has developed a system for chunking large files, storing them on Nostr, and piecing them together again when accessed by players. This method may also be usable for content other than games and has been shared via its own Github repo: Chunkey Monkey Github.

Crash Glow is the first Nostr client that can publish and play games hosted on Nostr in this way, but this work can also serve as a blueprint for other Nostr gaming apps. These apps can be interoperable solving a common pain point for players. Today players have to think about how long Wii eshop support will last or if they should buy a game on Steam or Epic. In a Nostr-based gaming future, games, payments, and profiles will be able to move seamlessly between gaming clients. Currently, Crash Glow can publish and play pico8 games, but the future vision is to support all kinds of game engines that can export to the web including bitsy, tic80, and twine.

See For Yourself (Example) ✔

The first game published to Nostr via Crash Glow was a game by Arkinox called “Defuse”

Try it here [Best experience on mobile]: Crash Glow link with this event name (ID): 7aa3aa7ab8eaa962ce1e87f473ee7d2bb9bf47353d0bd82b6fadff14175f2e11
When it was published, its javascript was stored on Nostr. Now when it is accessed by players on Crash Glow, the code is pieced together again and served as a game.

Plans 📆

There's so much more we can do!

Bug Fixes:
- In-game controls may not be fully aligned with the button images, depending on your screen size.
- Currently, the layout and sizing are best on mobile and there may be sizing issues with the interface on desktop.
New Functionality
- Flesh out the home and collection pages with content specific to each player.
- Support for more web-exportable game engines
- Longer term, we're looking at making other social elements of the nostr experience accessible on Crash Glow including zaps, comments, and reactions.
- We are also looking to incorporate additional payment flows like arcade-style pay-to-play and one-time purchases using e-cash.
UX/UI Design
- Although not yet fully implemented, we continue to test and iterate on how to give the best experience to game devs and players: Figma file

Team 🙌

Arkinox: Developer/Product Owner
JonB: UX Designer/Product Owner

Links 🔗

Crashglow.com

Crash Glow Github
Chunkey Monkey Github
Crash Glow Figma
See a game event in non-gaming nostr client: Snort link