Clickmine

Sketches from Clickmine

One of three original sketches of interfaces for Clickmine - the first and second of which are being released now with Ensemble.

Clickmine is a token-based clicker game dating from the peak of the 2017 ICO bull rush, making it easily among the first onchain artworks. With each click, a player "mines" an erc20 token and contributes to the digging of a virtual plot of land. As the game progresses, the token becomes hyperinflationary, being minted at a faster and faster rate, as the player purchases power-ups. In the final stages of the game, the player's token balance grows too large for the interface to display and the hole they have dug too all-encompassing to see outside of.

These sketches were made in late Summer 2017, in the lead up to the game's release. They were submitted with the commission application - eventually won by Clickmine - to Furtherfield and NEoN Festival, with whom it was first exhibited in Glasglow. From the heads-up-display, it can be seen that the core game mechanics were already in place at the time the sketches were made. The most noticeable set of changes came when implementing the procedurally-generated hole in browser. Another noticeable change can be seen in the shovel icons - initially these were planned to depict the mining machinery power-ups that had been purchased, but were later changed to a selection of icons from Windows 95.

Since release, Clickmine has been exhibited around the world. Notably, in Friend's first solo exhibition, at The Brandscape in Toronto, as well as at Somerset House in London, Ethereal Summit in NYC, at Gray Area Festival in San Francisco, Kate Vass Galerie in Switzerland, the Chronus Contemporary Art Center in Shanghai, the Francisco Carolineum in Austria, Raiden INST in Shenzhen, and at the Athens Biennale.