Final Form — A Game Evolves
It’s been about two and a half years since we began development on Final Form. What started in late 2022 as a set of ambitious ideas has evolved into something sharper, deeper, and frankly way cooler than we originally imagined.
From Chain to Core
Final Form began as a fully on-chain game. We were fascinated by the idea of autonomous worlds; systems that could run forever, permissionlessly, on the blockchain. For a time, that vision felt revolutionary.
But as time went by and the dust settled, something became clear: permanence isn’t the same as playability.
Most autonomous world experiments didn’t just fizzle, they imploded under their own complexity. Players didn’t show up. Despite all the promise, it didn’t work out.
So we pivoted.
We moved most of the game off-chain but kept tokens directly in the gameplay; fungible and non-fungible. That felt like a reasonable middle ground… until we watched the market again. And once more, the results were loud and clear: gaming tokens don’t attract enough players for a thriving game world. They often build short term excitement and lack long-term, authentic engagement.
We’re Watching. We’re Listening.
At Ex Populus, we don’t just build in a vacuum. We study what works, and what doesn’t, across every comparable title in the space. We analyze what players engage with, where they drop off, what resonates, and what falls flat.
When autonomous worlds fizzled, we paid attention.
When many game-native tokens demonstrated their own challenges, we took notes.
While there is still more room for experimentation with game tokens (We’re big believers in Planet X, among others) We’re not here to force a model on our community, the market, or the industry that is clearly not wanted.
We’re here to give gamers something they’ll love.
So in response, we’ve pivoted again, and we think we found a sweet spot.
Raijin Is A Shift That’s Working
Ex Populus launched Raijin.gg with a simple idea: reward players for playing the games they already love on Steam, without requiring those games to integrate with blockchains or launch their own token.
Nearly 5 months later, Raijin has hundreds of thousands of players registered and participating on the platform monthly. It’s working.
Raijin has helped seven games climb the Steam charts, including Missile Command: Delta from Atari, that reached #1 just ahead of its launch. It helped power Riftstorm into the top 50 most-played demos during Steam Next Fest. Raijin helped generate over 250,000 wishlists in just 8 weeks. And it’s paid out more than $1.25 million in real prizes to real PC gamers in 2025 so far (including $XAI).
All without a token in each game, or unwanted friction.
With Raijin, players who want rewards get exactly that — real recognition and benefits, the kind that built the backbone of the crypto industry.
At the same time, if you’re just here to play, relax, and tune out for a bit, nothing gets in your way. None of these games have any sort of native implementation of Raijin’s Rewards.
What Does That Mean for Final Form?
No blockchain mechanics. No economy that will only attract short term interaction, instead of authentically engaged players.
Instead, Final Form will integrate with Raijin as a purely optional experience. Opt-in on Raijin, and your wins, unlocks, and meta mastery will be recorded on-chain. But even if you opt in on Raijin, blockchain won’t be in your way. This Raijin integration means you could receive Xai rewards when you play Final Form, along with the other ~40,000 games on Steam. If you opt in to this experience it will be in the background, quietly making the Xai Ecosystem stronger, and giving you direct access to IRL rewards.
This is the new model for gaming rewards. And it’s showing enormous promise.
We’re Still Believers
We’ve always believed in $XAI. The Raijin model pushes all of the attention and focus to it, instead of a new “side” token.
We still believe blockchain has a role in gaming, as an attribution system that rewards real skill, real progress, and real achievement, behind the scenes and out of the way.
That’s exactly what Raijin is built for, tracking and rewarding your achievements with IRL rewards.
Final Form will be a complete, premium RPG.
Raijin is the opt-in layer that turns gameplay into IRL rewards.
Xai powers Raijin, invisibly, behind the scenes just like a back-end database.
Gameplay, Evolved
Final Form has grown into something far richer than we imagined at the start.
Your party is now represented by real characters on the battlefield instead of trading cards. Each captured soul becomes a fully realized, evolvable character with its own class, personality, abilities, and transformation path.
We are currently exploring turn-based combat, taking inspiration from a variety of popular RPGs. The design is strategy-first. But it’s not just about numbers, it’s about synergy, positioning, timing, and story. Your choices will have weight. Every battle moves you forward.
Final Form has become an RPG with teeth.
If you loved Baldur’s Gate 3 or Expedition 33, think of Final Form as a passionate, indie-scale answer to that style of game. Smaller budget, but just as much ambition. Tactical depth, character drama, and a world full of House-based dynamics and mystery.
It’s not just about winning fights.
It’s about evolving, your party, your choices, your story.
If you’re one of the few still using the Final Form staking app from 2022… yeah, we see you.
There aren’t many of you left. Just a handful of stubborn, card-evolving legends.
After launch, we’re putting together a care package. Probably a free game code. Maybe some swag. Maybe something “cursed” from the dev vault. Depends what we find.
This one’s for the few who were hyper-active before this post went live. Not after. If you’re just getting here now — love that for you, but this won’t be your drip.
At some point soon, we’ll shut the staking app down.
Until then, enjoy being part of the weird little club that never stopped evolving.
Studio Comms
Ex Populus has leveled up, too. We’ve expanded the team with top talent across animation, motion graphics, VFX, and UX/UI. You can feel that growth in every new build. This includes folks that come from companies like Blizzard, Ubisoft, Illfonic and plenty more.
We’ve been quiet lately, but for good reason.
With so much happening in the market, the Ex Populus team took time to re-evaluate the direction of Final Form. Now that we’ve realigned, you can expect more frequent and consistent updates going forward.
Our current development approach focuses on tackling each part of the game individually, aiming to bring every component to about 95% completion before moving on to the next. First you’ll see us wrap up the evolution experience, with plans to focus on deck building and battles next.
The videos and previews you’ll start seeing are not final builds — but they represent real progress. They’ll give you a clearer picture of where we’re headed and offer a path for public feedback.
Follow Final Form on socials to stay in the loop. We’re building something strange, beautiful, and worth the wait.
When’s It Coming?
We’re targeting early next year. That’s our current compass, but not our commitment.
We’ll ship when it’s ready. More importantly:
We’ll ship when the whole team believes Final Form is a hit (and not a day sooner).
Until then, we’ll keep building.
We’ll keep evolving.
And we’ll keep listening.
A Note to Gamers — From the Final Form Team
We’ve been lucky to grow a community of players, builders, and supporters from across the blockchain space. They’ve had eyes on this project from day one, and we’re deeply grateful.
But as we start to bring Final Form to a broader audience, we want to speak plainly about a topic that’s become polarizing: blockchain. While we have removed blockchain elements from Final Form — you may still be skeptical given our history of working in the crypto industry. Honestly, we get it.
There are valid concerns:
- Bitcoin and some blockchains have had negative environmental impacts.
- “Crypto bro” culture can feel exclusionary, even toxic.
- Gaming has seen a rise in predatory monetization. It’s fair to fear blockchain could make that worse.
- Scams are real. No one wants to be the next cautionary tale.
If you feel any of that, we hear you. We’ve had those conversations internally. We’ve asked those same hard questions.
Because at the end of the day:
We’re not just devs. We’re gamers. The kind of people who grew up losing sleep playing NES and SNES, and frankly NOT losing sleep over floor prices.
So here’s the history we stand by:
- We prioritize the environment. Our work with blockchain has been on Arbitrum One and Xai (built with Arbitrum tech), both low carbon footprints, built on top of ETH after its transition to PoS. This is nothing like Bitcoin. (don’t take our word for it, read this)
- We care about our people. Our team, our community, our players — this whole company is built on mutual respect, openness, and an obsession with good games.
- Final Form is a premium game. One price. No pay-to-win. No battle passes. No currency packs. No in-game micro-trash planned. Just a full experience for people who want to play, and (possibly) paid expansions if we succeed (think Dead Cells)
- No crypto inside the game. Blockchain does not touch gameplay. If you choose to engage, our discovery platform, Raijin, offers optional, achievement-based rewards. Totally separate. Totally optional.
Look, we know this won’t convince everyone. And that’s okay. All we ask is that you give us, and this game, a chance.
We built Final Form because we love this medium. We believe games matter. They shape culture, they tell stories, they give people identity and belonging. And we want to protect that, not exploit it.
Thanks for reading. Thanks for considering. And most of all, thanks for loving games.
— The Final Form Team
