For all the latest Hash Rush news, team interviews, timeline and future goals, please see our project announcement thread.

And if anyone has any questions regarding any part of Hash Rush, please do ask and we'll be happy to answer.

It has been a while since we updated our Bitcointalk community, but you'll be pleased to know that we've been extremely busy working on the game and presenting it at the worlds largest gaming convention, Gamescom 2018!

So, without further ado, let's dive into what Hash Rush has accomplished in the last month!

Alpha went live on the 31st of July
Our team has been laser-focused on this goal since pre-alpha ended, and we are really excited to see people playing our alpha. The response to our signups was truly humbling as we smashed through our goal in the first 48 hours, and doubled the number of players we’re granting access to a grand total of 2,000. Thanks to everyone who signed up and we can’t wait to hear what you think!

Please understand that the goal of the alpha is to test functionality; it’s not a representation of how all things will be in the final version of the game. It’s an alpha, so there will be bugs. Keep a close eye on your email inboxes for instructions on how to complete your registration!

New website launched
We’re also very happy to have relaunched our website with many new features, an updated aesthetic, hosting our blog here (so our Medium presence is going to get phased out), ZenDesk integration for our customer support and ticket integration, more details about the game and the various factions, and many other features. We hope you enjoy the new site!

Roadmap going live
This was requested by most of our community, so we have published our major milestones for the remainder of the year.
With the current timeline, we’re all set to launch the Ernacks faction as planned in December after tweaks and adjustments we make from the alpha and beta tests. Please visit the full roadmap page which will be a live roadmap keeping you updated as soon as we have more announcements.

Live Events
We hare midway through our convention and events season. Already in our pocket of completion are:

Blockchain Futurist Conference, Canada (August 15-16). Our CFO Jethro showcased the technology behind Hash Rush and delivered it to a panel of investors and industry experts. This resulted in us winning a $30,000 dollar services prize including, $10K worth of Northblock advisory services, a $10k Malta Blockchain Summit sponsorship package of our choice, $5k worth of advertising credit on Coinmarketcap, and a 30-second video from Hypercube.

Gamescom, Germany (August 21-25). Gamescom is the worlds biggest gaming convention and this year was open to 500,000 visitors and 1000 exhibitors. We had a small stand in hall 10.1 but interest and attention worthy of a much larger booth. During Gamescom our Co-Founder, Kristaps, Game Designer, Rob Nicholls, Online Marketing Manager, Matthew Chuen, and Community Manager Tenzin Chiodak all presented the game to the public.
We had a great time and at the end, GamesFinest.de awarded us the "Best Innovation" at Gamescom!

Up next we will be taking part in:
11-12 September – Blockchain Gamer Connects, Finland
20-23 September – EGX, England
20-23 September – Tokyo Game Show, Japan
25-26 September – Blockchain Game Summit]http://blockchaingamesummit.com/]Blockchain Game Summit, France

The RUSH ICO
We'll be making a proper announcement on Bitcointalk for the RUSH Coin Token sale, but no news update for Hash Rush can be complete without news of our token sale.

As many of you will already know, we successfully launched our Alpha on the 31st of July. However, we’re now happy to announce that we will be running a RUSH Coin Token Sale in September.
Our initial ICO was looked at as our SEED capital raise, where we raised what was required to develop and launch our PC version of Hash Rush. Our RUSH Coin Token Sale will be viewed as our SERIES A capital raise where the proceeds will be utilized to add more features to our roadmap.
You can find all the information that you need in this blog post

The Hash Rush Beta
Hash Rush will be running a closed beta testing phase which will include blockchain integration and cryptocurrency payouts!

The beta is scheduled to go live on 28 September 2018 to a maximum of 10,000 players. We will be testing the core elements of the game as well as our player reward pool, which is set at $30,000 worth of Ethereum for the duration of the beta.
You can sign up here: beta

That's all for now, we'll be back soon with more news from Hash Rush!

We've got some great news for everyone, the Hash Rush alpha will now be open to 2000 players!

Due to an overwhelming response, we're going to double the number of players who can participate in our alpha. A huge thank you to everyone who has signed up, joined our community or contacted us requesting access!

If you have not already signed up, you can do so now here: Alpha Registration Link

Hey there everyone,

It's been a pretty awesome few weeks! Starting with our logo change, then the alpha announcement, and finally watching the registrations come in. What I can say is that all of our expectations have been reached and then smashed, interest in the alpha has been fantastic.

To go with the alpha there have been quite a few articles written about us, for your pleasure and reading here are the links:

BlockchainGamer.biz: https://www.blockchaingamer.biz/news/4315/hash-rush-opens-alpha-signups/
CryptoBitGames: https://cryptobitgames.com/hash-rush-announces-their-alpha-launch/
Alpha Beta Gamer: https://www.alphabetagamer.com/hash-rush-alpha-sign-up/
Crypto Gamers Community: https://www.cryptoandgamers.com/blog/sign-up-for-the-hash-rush-alpha
Indie Game Launchpad: http://www.indiegamelaunchpad.io/hash-rush/

And more to come

Looking to the Future
For any of our fans in England - Hash Rush will be attending EGX 2018 in Birmingham, the UK's biggest game event. We even featured in a recent article over at EGX.net.

We have several other conventions that will take us pretty much all over the world. The details are being finalized now and we'll announce them to you once we're confirmed.

That's all for this mini-update, if you are interested in Hash Rush then don't forget to sign up to our alpha now!

After the success of our pre-alpha, we have been hard at work building and improving on every aspect of the game, and today, we are proud to announce the next step in the journey, a public alpha phase.

How to Take Part
Registration to the alpha starts now and is public so everyone can take part. All you need to do is visit our alpha registration page and register an account.

The actual alpha phase will start on the 31st of July and will run until the 28th of September. We’ll be giving you more information about what you can expect to find in the alpha between now and then.

A First Look at the Alpha
We are all extremely excited that Hash Rush will be moving to the next phase, the alpha. However, please do remember that this is still an early access period for the game and so some parts of the game will not be ready yet. The most notable features will be that all Blockchain related features will not be a part of this alpha, and only one race, the Ernacks, will be playable.

This does mean that players will not be able to use their Rush Coin in this phase.

What you can expect to find:

• The combat system, you will need to train your Ernacks to defend themselves against various threats.
• A marketplace. Even though Rush Coin will not be a part of the alpha, the marketplace will be in the game, so be prepared to craft, trade and sell items.

We will provide you with a simulated Rush Coin balance.

• Heavily improved Graphics and UI.
• Quests to keep you entertained.

Help and Questions
If you have any questions, the first step for you is to read our alpha FAQs (scroll down to the alpha section). If you cannot find the answer to your question, then either join our Discord server and ask us there, or send an e-mail to us at support@hashrush.com.

Otherwise, you are welcome to ask all your questions in this thread, we'll be happy to answer.

Hey there,

Glad that you enjoyed the article Siddartha. What people don't tend to see is that every small part of the game has a lot of thought go into it, generating planets is exactly one of those things. This is very typical of the gaming industry, it's why development costs can quickly become very big.

Regarding your questions
1/ It's been enhanced a lot. Pre-Alpha players will still recognise the game, but pretty much everything has had a makeover from textures to quests, to the gameplay. Think of the pre-alpha as a proof of concept.
2/ For now I don't have an answer to this question because it's something that we're actively working on. With HyperTown and Casual Connect, we're getting a lot of feedback from people who try the game - so we're making a decision later on. Additionally, we're going to have an alpha test phase (where people can play) and feedback from that will be used for how planets work in the end.

@saugwurm
That's the general idea, yes. Right now we are working entirely on the PC launch. However, we are already discussing how the mobile/tablet version will work and look. You'll hear more about mobile after our PC launch.

In the past, we've had a lot of questions asking us how using Blockchain benefits the game and the gamers.

To answer that we usually tell you to think about the last MMO you've played and chances are that the terms and conditions forbid you to sell the items for real money (so you don't effectively own it) or if you decide to stop playing and have some premium currency left over you cannot do anything with it.

Now with Blockchain Gaming, we can tell you to imagine a game where you - the player - owns all of the items and the currency. You can send the items to players for whatever you want and how-ever much you want, your time and effort in the game will have real financial rewards. And just as importantly, for the game developer, as the items are then stored on the blockchain, they cannot be duplicated, giving you some really good protection.

We've written up our thoughts on this in our latest article, check it out over on Steemit: https://steemit.com/gaming/@hashrushgame/power-to-the-player-decentralising-items

It's great to see the communities interest in Hash Rush, so thank you for your continued support!

Whilst we do not have much news to report right now, it's simply because we're hard at work putting the game together and making sure that we can incorporate the great ideas that the game design team come up with. We're working on a major news update for the community, so that you can see where we are, so stay tuned for that.

Now, to answer the questions!
@xonecoinlovers
The reaction of gaming enthusiasts has been excellent so far. We want to really build a bridge between gamers and the crypto crowd and show the world that blockchain technology can improve the power of the players and solve the problem of 'who owns the items and the currencies'.
We're aiming for a Q3 release, but we're also working to get a testing phase open before that, so my best advice to you is to keep following this thread and/or join our Discord server.

@Karodozo
Thank you for your vote of confidence. What you've written is exactly what we tell people all the time (who are uneasy or unsure about the project and the use of Eth Tokens). Rush Coin (our Ethereum Token) has an actual use and therefore is not simply a speculative asset. For sure you can speculate on it, but the real utility of RC is that it will be used in our in-game shop to buy items. We are working on further exchanges, when we have news on that we'll be sharing that with the world. For now, you can buy and sell Rush Coin either privately (people look to buy/sell on our Discord server) or via the EtherDelta and/or ForkDelta decentralized platforms.

@Calibee
It's great to know that you are interested in our project. The languages that will be supported at launch are English and Japanese. However, if we notice large communities of other languages (and we really want this to happen) we will provide support for that language and look to add it to the game. So the best thing to do if you want to have a language of your choice in Hash Rush - play the game and get your friends to play!

We have a new team interview for you.

We sat down with Sintija Degle, our Human Resources Manager, check out Human Resources Managerher interview over on Steemit to learn about her, what she does and what she likes best about working for Hash Rush!

Our latest news article is live - we talk about what did in our first Hash Rush Team Meeting in Riga, Latvia.

We've got a lot of news, teasers and photos of us working int he article, so be sure to check it out! As always, if you have any questions about Hash Rush, feel free to ask, I'll be happy to answer your questions!

https://steemit.com/gaming/@hashrushgame/the-first-hash-rush-team-meetup

It's great that you liked the photos, it really was something special to be able to have everyone in one place and be able to work together for that week.

We've always been active in the Blockchain convention front, one of our co-founders 'Kris' has pretty much been all around the world already talking about Hash Rush and the various projects that go with it.

Lightning for Rush Coin was something that I was really excited to end on, these innovative moves by Hash Rush shows that we're here not only for ourselves but also want to give back to the Ethereum community. I'm writing up a more in-depth article as to what it is and how it works. The short version is, we need to have free or, in the worst case non-expensive transactions between Hash Rush users. How we get there and all the juicy details will be released soon, so stick around!

One team, four continents, that's how the workforce for Hash Rush looks like.

For the first time, we are all together, working directly from the main office in Riga, Latvia.

We'll be having a lot of news, teasers, and photos coming from our meet up, if you want to stay up-to-date check out our forum post

Great to hear your interest in the project brjameng and uservalera. If you want to have a chat with the community, check out our Discord server and our forums.

@uservalera about your comment that the game visuals do not match the in-game images, that can be explained very easily. Firstly, currently no-one can play the game, the pre-alpha ran from December to January and since the 18th of January, the game has been closed as we build it further. The graphics (3D renders) that we are supplying now are all going to be found in the game, however, these are new updated graphics, with much-improved textures. For that reason, if you compare the images we are sharing now with the old screenshots and YouTube videos, they will look different.

Alternatively, we do have two very talented concept artists (links to their interviews can be found in the second post of this thread) who not only draw the concepts for our 3D modelers to build from, but also draw key art and promotional art that tie in with our articles and social media posts.

To be totally clear, we are not creating special cutscenes to show off graphics qualities that we don't have. All screenshots and videos are taking from our development builds, the change is explained by our constant updates and improvements!

Regarding our website. That is a fair comment, we do know that a lot of information is missing from the website. We are in the process of checking out existing content and we will be updating and improving the information we have, this includes our website content. It might take a while (game development takes priority ofc) however it is pretty high on the to-do-list.

---

If you or anyone else has any further questions, please do not hesitate to ask us. You may ask us in this thread, on our special forum topic, publicly on Discord, or you may send a private message to me on Discord (username is Darkfall).

Hey there everyone!

It's been a pretty busy few weeks, but we've got some exciting news for you!

Last week saw the start of our push to being talking about the actual game and project - something that we've not done enough of recently.

We kicked things off with our 'Hash Rush Aart: Concept to Reality' article over on Steemit. In the article you can find a collection of new in-game screenshots fresh from our developers build, a teaser of a future feature (not present on the pre-alpha) that allows you to upgrade units, new textures and art for trees and flora, an introduction to the npc's in Hash Rush, and finally a look at how we take a concept and change produce a 3D model out of it.

This article was just the starter as we are planning (for this week) to give you an update into the development of the game, straight from the developers. Looking to the future we're finally going to give you information on the Hash Rush mining pool and how our Cryptocurrency side of things will work.

The bigger news is, from the 7th of April until the 13th of April, the Hash Rush team will get together in Riga Latvia and have a week of intensive workshops where we will iron out many aspects of the game and the future marketing. You can expect to see new photos of the Hash Rush team, our offices and much much more.

Finally, I'd like to turn your attention to a new scheme we are starting to push. In the sense of openness, we want to make sure that if the community has any specific questions for the Hash Rush team you will get an answer asap, and that everyone else can see the answer. So whether it is game, project or crypto related, or perhaps just a general question you'd like to ask a member of the team please make a post in this thread over on the Hash Rush official forums and you will get an answer.

Interested community members may also post their questions on this thread, you will get an answer as well - but we'll copy the question and answer to the Hash Rush forums as well. Why are we doing things this way you might ask? It's simply that if a question is asked, no matter what the platform, be it Bitcointalk, Discord, Twitter, Facebook etc, everyone that is interested in the Hash Rush project can see the question and answer in a single location.

---

Feedback for the community
@Lontonbit, please make sure to read the rest of the thread before asking questions like that. If you do so, all of your concerns and questions would be answered.
To recap for you, no Hash Rush is not a scam, we are building the game and have had a successful pre-ico where investors were able to play a very early version of the game. We also aim to launch the game in Q3 of 2018 (this year).

@Dobrii, right now our exchange situation remains the same. RC can be traded on ForkDelta and EtherDelta, there has been an increased interest in RC purchasing over the last few days with the price reaching about 0.001Eth for 1RC (see EtherDelta for the recent sales/purchases). To be clear, we are planning on joining other exchanges in the near future.

@wgd, I'm really glad to read that you like the graphics. Please do not worry about the relative quietness of the project's marketing, as I've mentioned many times games have a very different cycle and we are well aware of what we need to do. That said, please do take Siddartha's recommendation and join our Discord channel, feel free to highlight me (username: Darkfall) or talk in private - I'd be more than happy to talk to you and get to the bottom of your concerns, afterwards we can share the results of the conversation with the community.

Thanks for the comments folks, as always I'm happy to answer your questions and concerns.

Firstly, @Humulus!
It's great to read that you're interested in the project. Regarding extra information, I would direct you to our Steemit blog where we always post all of our news.

If you are interested in our various team members - please see this post as I've listed all of the team interviews there.

If you're looking for a 'team page' (part of the website) we had one up, however as we've grown a lot since the project started, we realized that our current set up was not able to hold everyone that worked on the team. Therefore we are working to update it and make a better, fancier version. If you'd like to see the 'old' team page, you can still do so here. That said, please note that this page is now very out of date; we have had multiple new signings since it was last updated.

Regarding a roadmap, that becomes a lot tricker as we are a game, not a typical cryptocurrency project. The aim is to have the game playable and released by Q3 2018 (this year), with an early (full) alpha and beta stage for the community to test out/play. We do not have the full detail of this yet as we've just hired a new game designer 'Rick Gush' who is giving the game documents a final look over. Once everything is set in stone, we will be able to give you (and the rest of the community) a full roadmap.

If you have any further questions, do feel free to write publicly/privately or join our Discord server and I'll be happy to try and give you the answers that you need.

@wgd
As always, I truly am grateful to have your energy and questions in this community, so thank you for that.
To answer your concern, I don't think that it's fair to label Beyond the Void as a failed project, simply put they very clearly declared that their product is in the early access stage - something akin to a Beta, or even Alpha stage. In those phases, it is not uncommon for games to artificially limit access to the game. From my view, the project is being developed and is part of the (real) cryptocurrency game trailblazers.

Hash Rush has a powerful marketing team behind it, and a powerful game development team leading the way. We're currently adding more polish to the game, completing new features - some of which are even unannounced to the community (extra/new/awesome things), and updating all of our textures from the pre-alpha. I cannot give a real date, however, marketing will be starting in due time and you will see the effects of it.

Time for a small end of week update!

Our big announcement is that we've just hired a (very experience) game designer - Rick Gush. Rick comes to us with a huge wealth of knowledge having worked on major titles such as Command and Conquer, Dune II, Lands of Lore and Legends of Kryandia; if you're a gamer you're bound to have heard of at least one of these games!
If you want to learn a bit more about Rick, please check out our interview over on Steemit, if you have any questions that you'd like to ask him, let us know in a comment on the article, or just post it here!

A few community responses:
@wgd: Which game do you actually mean? Because we're following quite a few and none have been released, at best they're in early access testing phase and not full released.

Regarding Hash Rush, hopefully our latest hire will give you some confidence that we are indeed an experienced group of people that know how to make and release a game. The theme remains the same, we are prepared and ready to do large scale marketing and awareness, however we want to be in a position where we can offer a more complete game for our community to try out.

@Sergiose I'm really not too sure what you're trying to say, if something has been lost in translation somewhere, or you want to make a specific point, feel free to reach out to us via a private message, or just re-write what you wanted to say and we'll try and give you a proper answer!

I really cannot stress this point enough:
Hash Rush is a game, not a random crypto-project that tries to take advantage of the hype surrounding cryptocurrencies and as such it's needs and requirements are very different. What Siddartha wrote was bang on.

@Dobrii there are so many things wrong with what you said that it's hard to even start.

Working backwards:
"There is no news"
We keep the second post of this thread reserved and updated with all the latest news, please read that post.

"What do I do with their token?"
The token is going to be used as the primary in-game currency for Hash Rush.
To explain that a bit more, you know how when you play online games (MMOs) you always have a currency that you need to buy, usually it's something over-the-top like 'Rubies, Gems, Diamonds and so on, that is what Rush Coin will be.
Why is that important?
Well it all revolves around ownership and control; we are giving control back to the players, and this is done on multiple levels.
Firstly, Rush Coin ownership remains with the player. This means that if at anytime you get bored of playing (we hope you wont, but it's inevitable that it happens to some people) you can simply trade your RC for another crypto or sell it for money. That is something that is just not possible with the majority of existing games - once you've brought premium, you're stuck to use it.
Secondly, amount - if you're a gamer you'll know the pain of wanting to buy an item shop item that costs a tiny bit more than specific premium packs that you can legally buy. For example, you want to buy an awesome mount, it's fast, it flies, it costs 100 Gems, but the game that you are playing sells gems in packs of 99 and 199. So if you want that mount, you're forced to buy so much more than you need - this really is a tactic that MMOs use to get people to buy more. Rush Coin eliminates that pest, you buy as much as you want or need, you're never forced to get xyz amounts.

The list can go on, just think about your favorite MMO and the premium currency of that game. Everything is balanced not for fun, but to get you to buy more than you need, and you never really own the currency, you're stuck with whatever you buy, and if you are banned for whatever reason, there is no way to get your currency back.

"How can I use their product?"
You should read the other posts and they answer your question.
Firstly, the Hash Rush game is aimed at a Q3 2018 release. We've been quoting that date for a very long time now, and it's also available on our website.
Secondly, Rush Coin will be used in the game itself. Until the game is launched there is no 'use' of it. If you want to trade your RC away, you are totally free to do so, we recommend that you use ForkDelta or you can simply reach out to the community on Discord and see if anyone wants to buy some now.

"It looks like a fraudulent scheme for money laundering"
Really, I have no words for that.
We released a playable pre-alpha in December, we've got a video trailer of the game in action, we're releasing screenshots with update textures and models from the game. If you want a pump and dump token/coin, you've come to the wrong place.

"As a result of the ICO, it becomes clear that the project is not ready"
Again, this is a more confusing statement. An ICO is a fundraiser, If the project was ready - we would not need to have a fundraiser.

Overall I'd like to point out some very important points.
The first is, Hash Rush is a game, it's not a #random crypto project. Games have different development cycles and are marketed in very different ways. The biggest is that, a Game is not marketed by it's in-game currency worth, as such we'd get very little out of listing with exchanges now. In-fact, doing this (marketing via exchanges) would damage the product more than help it.

The second is that the team in Hash Rush consists of (game) industry veterans and many have worked on triple A products (gaming). For a product launch it would be hard to improve the team further as all the experience and know-how already exists.

Thanks for the comments creeptofarm and ceasarzgamer.

Steam is on our radar, but we will begin working on that much later as it requires us to have the game in a (more) playable state.

For new developments, we've had quite an eventful February, the major updates are:
Our PR and Marketing Manager 'Jochem' set off to start his own Crypto adventure, we're all rooting for his success!
(A side note for the community to explain the background - Jochem had expressed his decision to make his own company very early on when he first joined Hash Rush, so this is not a sudden turn of events).

To replace Jochem, we brought in a new Online Marketing Manager 'Matthew Chuen' and you can read about him in our interview here.

As we've got a very large Japanese community, we saw fit to hire a dedicated Community Manager for our Japanese members. We recently brought in 'Yoshikazu 'Yoshi' Osada to fill that role. Yoshi has been our Japanese translator for sometime now and has a rich background that you can read about in his interview.

With the new resources for the Japanese community, we're busy updating our social and community platforms so that we can support multiple languages (where possible) or open new Japanese dedicated accounts.
We currently have

Forums (new Japanese sections): https://forums.hashrush.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HashRush_JP
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hashrush_jp/

More platforms will follow (Discord will be updated to support more languages based on the users choice).

Onto the gaming side - our dev build has been updated and we'll be releasing new screenshots showcasing the projects progress.

It's Hash Rush news time!

We're in the process of expanding our team and we'll soon announce two more members - a dedicated Community Manager for the Japanese community and an online marketing manager! Expect to see their announcements soon.

For the community side
We have a new interview that we published today, this time we sat down with Adrian Bugnar who is a co-founder of Tractor, Set, GO! (our development team) and the art director. You can find his full interview over on steemit: https://steemit.com/gaming/@hashrushgame/interview-with-adrian-bugnar-co-founder-and-art-director-of-tsg

If anyone from the community would like to ask follow up questions for Adrian, fire away and we'll do our best to get them answered!

Thanks a lot for the fan comments!

The news from the Hash Rush side is quite quiet for now but we are preparing some more game related news and information in the coming month, definitely a lot to look forward to!

In the mean time, you can stay up to date with all the latest Hash Rush news by joining our Discord serverp and/or following us on Steemit where we post regular articles about Hash Rush, cryptocurrency and the blockchain.

Our latest articles and news
Staying Safe with dApps and an introduction to MetaMask : https://steemit.com/gaming/@hashrushgame/how-to-use-metamask-staying-safe-with-dapps
Biweekly Update - Week 6 : https://steemit.com/games/@hashrushgame/biweekly-update-week-6
The ICO Gold Rush is Here "What relative newcomers to the space should know before committing their cryptocurrency to investing in an ICO" : https://steemit.com/ico/@hashrushgame/the-ico-gold-rush-is-here