In November last year, the Zypher Network team won first place at a 3-day hackathon held by BNB Chain in Istanbul with their game "Crypto Rumble."
Recently, with new developments in the Zypher Network ecosystem, the first high-performance Layer 3 game, Zytron Pioneer, based on the Layer 2 network Linea and driven by zero-knowledge proofs (ZK), has officially launched. "Crypto Rumble" has also been endowed with many new elements on this brand-new platform and is officially released as the first heavyweight game.
"Crypto Rumble" is a fun card RPG + match-three blockchain game. Unlike other games in the same category, it is based on Zypher Network's server abstraction solution, truly achieving a Web3 orientation.
The game is fully built on-chain and does not rely on centralized servers during operation. Game assets, processes, and results can be verified on the blockchain, ensuring transparency and integrity, providing players with fair, transparent, and true asset ownership.
With the support of Zypher Network, the game itself adopts ZK technology solutions, ensuring a secure and verifiable gaming experience. Additionally, the integration of native AA accounts provides a seamless, gas-free on-chain experience, allowing the game to reach a broader player base and breaking the complexity brought by crypto-native features.
"Crypto Rumble" is one of the most representative games in the Zypher Network ecosystem and will also be a new representative of the Web3 gaming paradigm and form. With the official launch of this game, it is expected to lead a new wave of Web3 gaming trends.
Game Narrative of "Crypto Rumble"#
"Crypto Rumble" is a strategy-based Web3 game that combines the popular match-three and SLG gameplay. The game logic and rules are not complex, but players need to think deeply about troop deployment and formulate lineup strategies while mastering certain match-three skills to maximize block elimination with each move.
Before each game starts, players need to select three heroes from their hero pool as their team members and can choose different equipment from their inventory to provide certain attribute bonuses to the heroes. The ultimate goal of each game is to defeat the BOSS with different attributes on the opposite side.
At the start of the game, players need to move blocks to eliminate blocks of the same color. When blocks are successfully eliminated, the heroes will take turns attacking the BOSS. The more blocks eliminated, the higher the damage bonus to the BOSS. The battles between players and the BOSS are turn-based; if the player's team defeats the BOSS, they win the game; otherwise, they lose.
Some game levels will limit the number of match-three moves. If the player has not defeated the BOSS before exhausting their moves, it is also considered a challenge failure.
Hero Attributes and Equipment#
In "Crypto Rumble," a total of 9 heroes are set, belonging to three attributes: Mage, Assassin, and Warrior. Each hero has certain data indicators such as attack power, defense power, agility, and stamina. The stamina indicator represents the hero's energy during battles; each attack consumes energy, which does not recover linearly over time. Players need to spend $Diam tokens (in-game tokens) to restore the hero's stamina to ensure they can be used normally in the game.
Heroes have levels (1-100), and players need to consume experience points (earned by participating in games and completing tasks) and $Gold assets (in-game assets that can be exchanged for governance token $CR and other tokens) to upgrade heroes and continuously enhance their attributes. Additionally, each hero has three qualities: Normal, Elite, and Legendary. Players can choose the same hero to fuse and consume a certain amount of $Diam assets to enhance the quality, which will lead to a qualitative leap in the hero's attributes.
As heroes level up and their qualities improve, players can challenge more difficult levels and gain a better gaming experience and rewards in various game modes.
To obtain heroes, players typically need to purchase mystery boxes with $Diam assets to unlock heroes. Opening the blind box will randomly yield heroes of three types of attributes, with qualities also being random. (Currently, users can participate in staking to obtain blind box rewards in the Crypto Rumble sub-event of Zypher's Treasure Ark Campaign: https://testnet.cryptorumble.io/)
Of course, players can also enhance the combat effectiveness of heroes by equipping them.
"Crypto Rumble" has three types of equipment: hats, weapons, and shoes. Similar to heroes, each piece of equipment also has Normal, Elite, and Legendary qualities. Equipping heroes before the game will enhance certain attributes to varying degrees, and equipment also needs to be obtained from mystery boxes.
The SLG game property of "Crypto Rumble" lies in its setting of hero attributes that counter each other.
Counteracting Troop Deployment#
Similar to heroes, BOSSes also have three different attributes: Mage, Assassin, and Warrior. Different character attributes have counteracting characteristics. Warriors counter Assassins, Mages counter Warriors, and Assassins counter Mages.
Therefore, when a hero's attribute counters that of the BOSS, it triggers an advantageous confrontation, granting the hero a 50% damage bonus, thus leveraging their natural advantage. Conversely, when a hero faces a BOSS with an attribute that counters theirs, it triggers a disadvantageous confrontation, and the BOSS receives a 50% damage reduction, reflecting the difficulty of fighting a stronger opponent.
From the player's perspective, when facing different BOSSes, they need to deploy different lineups, and for heroes that can trigger advantageous confrontations against the BOSS, further equipment selection is necessary.
Game Modes#
"Crypto Rumble" has three game modes: PvE, World Boss, and PvP.
PvE
In PvE mode, there are two types: Challenge Mode and Hero Mode. Players need to consume 100 stamina each time they participate.
Challenge Mode is similar to level clearing, currently containing a total of 30 levels. The higher the level, the higher the BOSS's attack power and health, making the challenge more difficult, but the rewards are also greater. Players need to continuously upgrade their heroes' levels and qualities to defeat higher-level BOSSes.
Hero Mode doubles the attributes of previously defeated PvE BOSSes, and players will receive corresponding rewards for defeating these BOSSes.
World Boss Mode
World Boss Mode is similar to a ranking competition. Players need to pay 1000 $GOLD tokens to obtain an entry ticket to participate. Players can choose up to 3 heroes to fight against the World BOSS. Each challenge lasts 3 minutes, and the system ranks players based on the damage dealt to the World BOSS at the end of the battle.
World Boss Mode opens by season (each season lasts seven days), with the reward pool for each season being 90% of the total entry fees. During the rewards, the system will adopt a mining ranking system, allowing all users participating in the World BOSS battle to mine based on their rankings and receive rewards.
PvP
PvP is a multiplayer online arena mode that allows multiple players to participate and compete against each other. Each player selects 3 heroes to participate in the battle and chooses a betting amount: 100 $CR/500 $CR/1000 $CR (governance tokens), then selects the automatic matching system to find PvP opponents.
In the game, players need to compete based on the damage dealt to the BOSS within a 3-minute limit. When time is up, the player who dealt more damage to the BOSS wins. The winner will receive 90% of the bet amount, while the platform will take a 10% fee. Additionally, the winner will receive an extra PK reward of $CR.
The Clever Combination of Match-Three and SLG#
From the perspective of game modes, "Crypto Rumble" spans both match-three and SLG potential game segments, achieving a complementary relationship through their organic combination.
From the match-three gameplay perspective, it is a game segment that has been validated by the market over many years. Such games have a high acceptance rate, making them potential players among both young and non-young demographics. Data shows that the user base of leading match-three games reaches as high as 800 million, and the age distribution of match-three game users is particularly broad. Match-three games rank at the top in terms of overall App user scale, activity rate, and user stickiness. According to a Gamma data survey on casual games, 74.8% of players prefer elimination games.
In fact, the match-three game model itself has simple gameplay and easy-to-understand rules, which lowers the learning cost for players and reduces the entry barrier for the game. Match-three games are usually categorized by shape or color, allowing players with color recognition or visual discrimination difficulties to enjoy the game easily, providing a user-friendly experience. Although match-three games are simple in gameplay, they are easy to understand but difficult to master, offering considerable challenges and fun. However, most match-three games often lead to player fatigue due to their single content.
On the other hand, while SLG games have not been around for long, we see that these once "niche" SLG games typically attract a large number of dedicated old users who are highly loyal. These players usually have mature gaming mindsets and have formed solid gaming habits. The sense of achievement gained through strategic competition in the game further drives their intrinsic motivation. The combination with match-three gameplay can effectively overshadow the aesthetic fatigue caused by repetitive content in match-three games.
Moreover, SLG games are strategy-based, so most players may need to spend considerable time developing their "game understanding." The long learning time and the sunk costs and financial costs associated with the "hardcore" gameplay of SLG usually make players reluctant to leave, gradually becoming "hardcore" players. Therefore, in terms of loyalty and user stickiness, SLG players typically outperform other game types.
Thus, from the perspective of these two game models, whether it is match-three gameplay or SLG gameplay, both have strong capabilities to attract user stickiness. The SLG model can compensate for the game fatigue caused by repetitive content in the match-three game model, forming a complementary relationship. Additionally, the SLG game model can also consume a large amount of output from the match-three game model, promoting a positive cycle in the economic ecosystem.
So, from the gameplay perspective, for "Crypto Rumble," using match-three + SLG as an entry point backed by a vast potential audience is particularly clever and highly promising.
Empowerment of Zypher Network#
Web3 games have attracted attention from gamers due to their P2E characteristics, but the lack of infrastructure in the Web3 field has led to many Web3 games being difficult to compare with traditional games due to high thresholds, poor experiences, high costs, and rough production, making many players hesitant to praise them.
In fact, Zypher Network is working to improve the infrastructure challenges faced by Web3 games by building a brand-new engine based on ZK solutions. By adopting a server abstraction solution based on ZK technology, games can be written into the ZK circuits of the Zytron engine and run entirely on-chain.
During operation, nodes in the Zypher Network engine will aggregate action logs generated by players' continuous gaming behaviors into ZK proofs. Within a certain period, these gaming actions (each being a transaction) are aggregated into a single ZKP proof, and multiple proofs are submitted to the chain as a single transaction. For example, in the "Crypto Rumble" game, multiple movements and eliminations of blocks will be aggregated into ZK proofs and verified, rather than verifying each gaming action individually. This method not only significantly reduces gas fees but also ensures that players have a no-delay gaming experience for many PvE game deployments.
For many PvP game scenarios, Zypher Network's z4 engine will be able to provide support. The z4 engine allows players to match into game rooms, which are stateless rooms where nodes do not store data, greatly enhancing the engine's scalability, fault tolerance, security, and responsiveness, facilitating the distribution of computing tasks across multiple nodes without worrying about data synchronization issues, thus improving overall performance and efficiency.
Zypher Network has solved a series of problems faced by traditional Web3 games due to insufficient infrastructure. Especially with the adoption of the AA account solution, the "Crypto Rumble" game will be able to fully compete with Web2 games in terms of experience, focusing on high-quality game content supplemented by P2E, gradually pushing Web3 games back to their original intentions.
Additionally, with the high integration of Zypher Network and the TON ecosystem, the Telegram mini-program version of "Crypto Rumble" is about to launch and will be marketed, further lowering the accessibility threshold for the game.
Backed by hundreds of millions of active users in the Telegram ecosystem, it will also be a massive attention market. "Crypto Rumble" is expected to capture users from the vast user pool of this ecosystem through the Telegram ecosystem pipeline, becoming a hit in the Web3 gaming field with its unique game content and excellent gaming experience.