# Heroes One Year Anniversary 🥳

Happy birthday Heroes! It was a year ago that 3,333 Heroes were summoned on the Ethereum blockchain. Heroes was founded by me, [Deployer](https://twitter.com/0xdeployer). As a child I got lost in the world of Zelda: A Link to the Past. In a way this game shaped my imagination. This was my inspiration for the Hero characters. I was also inspired by the Loot project. I've bet my career on NFTs and have building in the space since 2018. I launched and early NFT minting tool and marketplace and authored ERC-2309. At the time Heroes launched there was something happening in the NFT market that I didn't like (things like this often spur me to do things differently). New NFT projects were constantly overhyped and potential collectors had to grid to get whitelist spots. Overhyped projects would launch, the price would rise rapidly - sometimes to rediculous levels - and then crash and burn. I created a Twitter account for Merlin the Blue, the benevolent wizard who came to spread the word of the summoning of the Heroes. There was no Discord, no whitelists, no grinding. Only the whispers of a wizard telling of a prophecy.

With Heroes I wanted to capture that joy I felt as a child while battling to save the princess from an evil wizard. In addition to that I am a believer in what has become a movement in its own right, CC0 licensed assets stored on the Ethereum blockchain that can be used as building blocks to create new worlds. Heroes were built in this spirit. The art assets are licensed under CC0 and the stats and traits of the Heroes are stored on the blockchain for anyone to use. When the project first launched this was all there was - CC0 assets and a future release of Ghouls, enemies of the Heroes. Each Hero would receive a free Ghoul. I had imagined that the community could take these assets and create games and experiences. But then I had another thought. Through talking with the community I realized that I had a vision for Heroes and if I wanted that vision to come to fruition then it would fall on me to build it, not the community.

It was then that I pulled together a small team and we began to talk with various game studios about a partnership to help build out the vision I had for Heroes. During this time we also launched the Heroes marketplace and the Heart token, the premium in-game currency used in the marketplace. I also discovered [Crypts and Caverns](https://threepwave.com/cryptsandcaverns). The core Heroes team had been discussing building a single player dungeon game prior to building a multiplayer experience and we couldn't ignore the synergy between Heroes and Crypts and Caverns. C&C are a set of 9000 NFTs that store dungeon maps on chain for anyone to use.

I decided that we would use C&C and create our own dungeons in the Hero universe. From there you'd be able to play your Hero in your dungeon, slay enemies, find treasure and earn resources to craft items. The Hero artist created several tilesets for the various dungeon environments found in C&C and we added a special environment for the Heroes universe, the Ghoul underworld. The founder of C&C collaborated with me on the smart contract and friend of the Heroes team collaborated with me the write the code that would generate C&C dungeon configurations into static images for the Hero universe. [You can read more about this here](https://hackmd.io/@deployer/turning-ethereum-dungeons-into-playable-unity-levels). I then turned these into playable games levels that will be playable in the upcoming Merlin's Dungeons game and our weekly Dungeon events! [Read more about our latest progress here.](https://hackmd.io/@deployer/rJX7RF_3s)

Our discussions with the game studios had fizzled out. We had found a potential partner and we were planning game mechanics and timelines and then came the bear market. Raising additional funds to pay a studio now became much harder and giving away a large portion of company equity didn't sound appealing either. We came to the conclusion that we could build a fun and engaging experience on our own. Besides I've found that the longer you can bootstrap and stay scrappy the better. It's always served me well.

A partner on the team set up an initial project in Unity and it was off the races. There was no clear guides on how to do what we wanted to do - single player dungeon experiences, backed by server authority, that supported a collection of 3,333 NFT Heroes with varying traits. But we figured it out and have built a scalable system that accomplishes just that. Not to mention a system to turn 3,333 programmatic dungeon maps into playable game levels filled with enemies and treasures. But now we are closer than ever to having our first Dungeon event! So [follow us on Twitter](https://twitter.com/MerlinTheBlue1) and [join our Discord](https://discord.gg/7sE2se2Z62) to keep up to date with the exciting things happening in the Heroes universe!

Dungeon minting now live! Go to [www.Heroes.fun](https://heroes.fun) to mint.