Community Q&A // June 2026

We're redesigning them. The new boxes will have a foam core inside that holds the coins safely and securely. The redesign is mostly about the new studio branding and a fresh art direction and aesthetic overall. Both boxes are going to be really nice and we hope you like them. The second we have the designs finished and prototypes in hand, we'll snap some pictures and share them.

The old inventory coins from the first game, the ones we already minted, will get new labels so they're clearly differentiated from the original run. That keeps the collectibility of the originals intact. We will not be minting additional versions of the old coins. Assuming we have them in stock, we'll re-slab them and put them back into circulation through a few different in-game systems we have in mind. Those systems aren't fully fleshed out yet, so we'll go deeper as we get closer to locking them in. Short version: if we have them in inventory, we plan to use them, in new holders, through new systems.

If they're available, yes, and a lot of them aren't. Once we have the full inventory in place, we'll do population reports on all the different items. Anything still available goes back into circulation, but in a new slab, like I mentioned above. They'll be clearly differentiated from the original launch so the original rarity stays protected.

Yes, we want set-completion achievements for finishing off an entire run of coins, handled through an in-game achievement system. The specific rewards aren't locked in yet, but collecting a full set or a full run is going to carry some kind of benefit. We'll get deeper into it as we build those systems out. The idea of an achievement system, especially around collectibles, is something we're committed to.

We expected good demand, but not quite that much going in. Watching those fluctuations was a really interesting market signal for us, and it's shaping how we build collectibles for 2.0 and how we think about the different avenues of coin collecting.

We’ve been designing our collectible-acquisition systems so there’s always room for the market to grow based on demand for specific coins. Because coins will also carry an in-game value, there’s going to be an interesting overlap between people who want a coin for its in-game effect and collectors who just want the set. That Venn diagram of “game player” and “pure collector” is going to be really cool to watch as the economy builds out.

We’re also going to start tracking values and trade histories, and giving people a safe way to trade collectibles. We had the Discord set up for that before, but going into 2.0 we know the collectible and trading side is core to what Eighth Era is. We want a secure, clean way for everyone to build and complete sets, or just stack 500 Clonks if that’s your thing. That’s up to you. We’re building that system now.

Right now the plan is that characters mostly come through the gacha machine, the campaign, and other in-game systems. There are no store-exclusive units planned at this exact moment.

The first game didn’t have a gacha system or most of the features the new game has, so we now have a lot more ways to get characters into players’ hands than we used to, which covers much of what used to be store units. There will be plenty of ways to earn free gacha rolls to collect your favorite characters. What we are planning for the store is cosmetics, skins for units rather than new units. That’s new to the game. This is all still in flux while we figure out the best ways to get units to players, and as it firms up I’ll come back with the latest plan.

The battle pass is coming back, with a Premium and a Normal tier. We're also considering a yearly subscription for the premium pass, though it's too early to go into specifics.

We’re putting a lot of thought into how to expand the battle pass rewards beyond the first iteration, but that’s still in design. There will also be an online store, available both on the .com and inside the game, for various bundles, with different rewards depending on how you get them. So both are in the works: the battle pass on the subscription side and one-time purchases on the store side.

That's the aim. We want real-time tournament results on a clean leaderboard for everyone. The game is going much more server-authoritative than last time, which gives us a lot more room to build features like up-to-date, live information. We're actively working on these systems.

We're looking at different ways to balance tournaments in 2.0, and just having more players will help a lot on its own. We don't have anything specific to commit to yet, we're still working through the formulas and figuring out the best approach. We know tournaments in the last game felt stale at times, where you'd see certain names show up and basically know how it was going to go. Some of that was the population distribution at the time. It's top of mind for us, both how brackets work and how rewards get handled, and we'll share more as it firms up.

A whole bunch of game modes. The classic campaign loops, PvP, and the tournament system are all baked in. There's also new stuff. The one I'm most excited about, and I don't think I've mentioned it here before, is the Corporate Tower, a mini roguelike. Early, early information, so if it changes, don't crucify me. The idea is an escalation system where you fight through waves and floors of a corporate tower. It gets harder as you climb, but you might get a random buff applied to you and your team along the way, and there's a leaderboard tied to it. It's a new system to chase and I'm genuinely excited about it. We're deep in the game docs right now figuring out the best way to implement it.

On top of that we’re looking at seasonal events with mini-games attached, and small campaign updates. The way we’re building this world lets us add new chapters and new stories to the lore that you can play through, and some of those battles will be more unique.

If you want to farm resources, the loopable campaign and auto-battle are there for that. Beyond that you've got the dungeon events, the Corporate Tower I just mentioned, PvP, and a few other systems in the works. We also had Scout Missions in 1.0, a cool alternate way to earn resources, familiar but with new flavor. We're also exploring an idle mode for loops that would let battles run in the background while you engage with other game modes or while you're offline.

Honestly, how farming works depends a lot on what you’re chasing, and we’re building a bunch of new systems around that. It’s a little too broad to fully answer right now, and some of it is still in flux while we balance it and make it fun. Once it’s locked down I’ll be able to say more.

The Super Swap is one of our most iconic features and it's coming back, now called the Flux Strike. A little different in flavor, same core concept, and it's still a real differentiator for us.

On the speed penalty, that’s a conversation for our game designers. We’re doing combat and damage passes right now to make sure everything still feels as good as it did before as we tweak the formulas, and we’ll get to that as we balance the rest of the kit.

A lot of the standard stuff you’d expect is still here. DoTs, debuffs, the whole buff and debuff rock-paper-scissors. We also reworked the old Sun, Moon, and Earth triangle to lean more into armor type versus damage type.

The bigger thing is our variant and merge system, and this is the cliff-notes version because a full post is coming. Take Maxine. She’ll have up to seven variants across different eras, and we’re launching with an Atomic Era Maxine and a Synthetic Era Maxine. Each variant comes with its own skill set. When you unlock a variant, you unlock its skills, which you level up through our skill system on top of leveling the unit itself. Don’t think of each Maxine as a separate character. Think of them as loadouts.

Here’s the part I love: you build your own Maxine by how you merge her variants. Primary skill from the Atomic Era, charge one from the Synthetic Era, charge two from Atomic, and as more variants release, maybe a Flux Strike from the Industrial Era or a passive skill from the Mythic Era. Maxine always keeps her core identity, she’s a glass-cannon DPS, but maybe one variant gives her a small heal, or a different damage type, so you decide whether to stack chemical or physical damage. You’re building your own Swiss Army knife of a character, and I haven’t really seen this done before.

On top of that, the coins you collect attach to your teams as buffs, down to the character level or as team bonuses, and there’s the whole equipment system layered on as well. It all adds up to a different kind of meta and a different chase. There’s always going to be a meta, let’s not kid ourselves, it’s 2026, every game has one. But this one is going to be less defined, with room for off-meta builds and discoveries that can shift the whole thing once people figure them out.

For quality of life: you’ll be able to save up to three loadouts per unit for quick access, plus team loadouts that save a full team including each unit’s loadout. We’re very aware that the more complexity you add around character editing, the more you have to invest in systems that let people play the game instead of playing the inventory screen.

Think of it like the iceberg of gaming. You can get into the game quickly and succeed quickly. Then, when you want it, the complexity is there. The variant and merge systems I talked about above let you build characters that are yours, try off-meta builds, and go really deep, more chess than checkers if that's what you're into.

But you can enjoy the game without engaging with any of that. And the different game modes each pull on a different kind of player. Want to just battle? Battle. Want to push the Corporate Tower as high as you can? That’s a different skill set, build, and philosophy. PvP is different again. Seasonal events, winter, summer, the holidays, can be simple little mini-games or full endgame storylines. We release them together and each one touches a different type of player.

So no, it’s not Candy Crush. It’s still a team builder and collector, and it’s approachable, we’re not trying to make it needlessly complex. But we are absolutely people who want this game to feel deep. If you’re the type to pull out a spreadsheet and play with the numbers, and I know some of you are, you can do exactly that. It’s up to you how deep you go. This isn’t the Disney game. It’s Eighth Era. We’re going way harder.

The second our systems are in a place I'm comfortable showing the world, and we're getting really close, we'll do our first demo, either recorded or live, and you'll see the game for the first time. It'll be rough, but still really cool. We're not far off from having the full basic gameplay loop playable, with some characters animated in, and you'll see the battle UI for the first time. Keep up with us. The moment we have it, we'll drop it, and I might share some screenshots of the design UI being implemented so you can get a feel for where we're headed. There are some things I think you're going to find really interesting.