Published on: 21/12/2021

What is Upland? Virtual Property Trading Game

Upland is a game that claims to be a new type of virtual economy. Focused almost entirely on making money, this game doesn’t prioritise gameplay the way some crypto games do.  Instead, it’s all about the real estate game, and maximising profits as much as possible. The framework for this is a virtual real estate situation. Other metaverses already heavily feature this, such as CryptoVoxels, Sandbox, and to a degree even Axie Infinity.

Land ownership in virtual spaces is big money. It’s one of the more expensive types of items out there, and Upland outright focuses on doing exactly that, with one twist – the land is tied to real-world addresses. Now that does NOT mean that buyers will receive any ‘real’ real estate – however, their plots correspond to a real place somewhere on the planet.

The Land

To create their preferred environment online, users can buy, sell and build on their land. There are various different houses and developments, which users can make use of in order to create the perfect little environment for themselves and others. Essentially, the real estate in Upland will serve as a sort of parallel universe where you can recreate your own (or someone else’s) neighbourhood to your liking.

Other users can then explore, visit, and wander around the new virtual world, where certain items and drops are waiting randomly for users to find and collect. These relate to gameplay more than anything else, and owning land provides some advantages here too, for example giving you free fast travel points while you may have to pay a fee to visit someone else’s minted property.

These properties have different a unique ‘real’ address and stats like rarity, size, and of course indirectly – value! Some properties will be more popular than others, and thus also have more income potential for their owners.

Upland Tokens

In addition to the NFTs that are obviously a core part of playing Upland, there is also a base token called UPX – it functions as a currency that users use somewhat like how game money is used in monopoly. Users have to pay a property fee in order to visit minted properties they don’t own, and they can also find some on the side of the road, and of course earn more of it by buying and selling property successfully.

Game Development

This crypto game is still only in Beta, and has an extensive list of planned future features, with things like transportation options, shops, cafes, ornaments, and even token swaps. There are also things like collection challenges that users can complete with their land, and so on.

For now, options are limited to base gameplay, which involves buying and minting properties, and exploring around the virtual map with a player-character substitute – the explorer! Fast travel to minted properties as well as free travel to user-owned properties are also already implemented.