Written by DeFi Beats

Hats protoDAO, the decentralizing entity preparing to govern Hats Protocol, recently completed its first onchain game, a murder mystery experience designed to bring people together onchain in an innovative way. The game served two purposes: 1) explore non-skeuomorphic ways for organizations and projects to get things done and build with Hats, and 2) plant the seeds for an eventual Hats “Game Department”. 

Following is a summary of what the game was, how it used Hats, and what’s next for onchain games.

The Game Design

The Hats protoDAO Murder Mystery game brought five contestants together to compete to win a spot on the Rehash podcast by solving a complex mystery in teams. Using a popular murder mystery game as a foundation, the Hats protoDAO team reimagined it to fit an onchain, team-oriented format.

The game began with a Halloween party setting and a shocking crime: the murder of Jules, a longtime friend of the party attendees. While everyone had a motive to want Jules gone, only one person was truly guilty. Each contestant assumed the role of “The Detective,” a character who could recruit and grant "hats" (access) to teammates, enabling a team-based approach to uncovering the murderer.

Teammates, assigned roles like The Psychologist, The Architect, or The Rookie, each received unique, character-specific information about the crime. This information was securely stored on a hat-gated Charmverse page, requiring detectives to recruit seven friends to obtain all the clues needed to solve the case. As teams worked collaboratively to piece together the means, motive, and opportunity, they uncovered the mystery step-by-step.

Congratulations to Andy Boyan from the Last Network for being the first to solve the puzzle and winning our prize! Ady was able to leverage his friends in the Last Network Telegram channel to quickly compile all of the available information. After about 48 hours, Andy tweeted out the correct suspect, their motive, and how they accomplished the dastardly deed. 

Hats in Onchain Games

Participants praised the game as a fun and engaging way to explore onchain interactivity using Hats Protocol. But this experience raised an important question: why incorporate Hats into games at all?

Hats protoDAO is dedicated to facilitating a decentralized, onchain organization. By developing integrations with various web3 tools, Hats aims to become a fundamental resource for onchain collaboration. The team believes that beyond traditional applications, creative uses of onchain infrastructure will enable web3 to redefine how we live and work together. While Hats can accommodate any organizational structure, it’s the non-skeuomorphic, or novel, applications of onchain tech that truly set web3 apart.

This murder mystery is just the beginning. Hats protoDAO is launching a gaming working group where members are invited to brainstorm, test, and refine different onchain games that utilize Hats. This group plans to experiment with new concepts, like an onchain scavenger hunt where participants must locate individuals based on specific criteria—such as holding a particular NFT, minting a POAP from the merge, or holding a specified amount of tokens.

Another potential game idea involves an escape room, where participants solve puzzles to mint additional hats. Each hat would unlock a new “room” within a Charmverse workspace or give access to files in a Fileverse workspace that contain the next challenge. The objective is to create progressively more complex puzzles, leveraging hats to enhance the immersive experience.

What Next?

Looking forward, Hats protoDAO envisions the gaming working group evolving into an innovations hub, dedicated to discovering creative applications of Hats Protocol. This could range from simple team-building exercises to complex simulations that bring out the best in people, teams, and entire organizations, both big and small.

Hats protoDAO is excited to keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible with onchain organizations, fostering community, creativity, and collaboration. This is just the start, and we look forward to the many ways we can innovate and play together onchain.

Visit community.hatsprotocol.xyz to join the Hats Community to get involved.