In November last year, the Zypher Network team won first place at a three-day hackathon event held by BNB Chain in Istanbul with their launched game "Crypto Rumble."
Recently, with new developments in the Zypher Network ecosystem, the first high-performance Layer 3 game driven by zero-knowledge proofs (ZK), Zytron Pioneer, based on the Layer 2 network Linea, has officially launched. "Crypto Rumble" has also been endowed with many new elements on this brand-new platform and has been officially released as the first heavyweight game.
"Crypto Rumble" is a highly entertaining card RPG + match-3 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 genuine 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 natives.
"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 two popular gameplay styles: match-3 and SLG. 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-3 skills to maximize block elimination with each move.
Before each game round 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 round is to defeat the opposing BOSS with different attributes.
At the start of the game, players need to eliminate blocks of the same color by moving them. When blocks are successfully eliminated, the heroes will take turns attacking the BOSS. The more blocks eliminated, the higher the damage bonus dealt to the BOSS. The battles between players and the BOSS are turn-based; if the player's team defeats the BOSS, they win the round; otherwise, they lose.
Some game levels will limit the number of match-3 moves, and if the player has not defeated the BOSS before exhausting their moves, it will also be considered a challenge failure.
Hero Attributes and Equipment
In "Crypto Rumble," a total of 9 heroes are set, divided into three attributes: Mage, Assassin, and Warrior. Each hero has certain metrics such as attack power, defense power, agility, and stamina. The stamina metric 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 fuse the same heroes and consume a certain amount of $Diam assets to enhance their quality, which will lead to a qualitative leap in the hero's attributes.
As heroes level up and their quality improves, players can challenge more difficult levels and gain a better gaming experience and rewards in various game modes.
To obtain heroes, players usually need to purchase mysterious hero boxes with $Diam assets to unlock them. Opening the blind box will randomly yield heroes of three types of attributes, and the quality is also 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 mysterious equipment boxes.
The SLG game attribute 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.
Thus, when a hero's attribute counters that of the BOSS, it triggers an advantageous duel, granting the hero a 50% damage bonus, thereby showcasing their natural advantage. Conversely, when a hero faces a BOSS with an attribute that counters their own, it triggers a disadvantageous duel, resulting in a 50% damage reduction for the BOSS, reflecting the difficulty of battling 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 duels against the BOSS, further selection in equipment is required.
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 a level-clearing mode, currently containing a total of 30 levels. The higher the level, the greater the BOSS's attack power and health, increasing the challenge difficulty, but also the rewards. 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 in this mode. Players can choose up to 3 heroes to fight against the World BOSS. Each battle 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 registration fees. During the rewards distribution, the system will adopt a mining ranking system, meaning all users participating in the World BOSS battle can 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 uses 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.
Clever Combination of Match-3 and SLG
From the perspective of game modes, "Crypto Rumble" spans two potential game segments: match-3 and SLG, and through their organic combination, it achieves a complementarity of the two game types.
From the match-3 gameplay perspective, it is a game segment that has been validated by the market over many years. These types of games have a high acceptance rate, making them potential players among both young and non-young demographics. Data shows that leading match-3 games have a user base of up to 800 million, and the age distribution of match-3 game users is particularly broad. Match-3 games rank at the top in terms of all-channel 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-3 game model itself has simple gameplay and easy-to-understand rules, which lowers the learning cost for players, thus reducing the entry barrier for the game. Match-3 games are usually categorized by shape or color, allowing players with color recognition or visual discrimination difficulties to enjoy the game relatively easily, providing a user-friendly experience. Although match-3 games are simple in gameplay, they are easy to understand but hard to master, possessing considerable challenge and fun. However, most match-3 games often lead to player fatigue due to their repetitive content.
On the other hand, while SLG games have not been around for long, we see that SLG games, which were once considered "niche," typically attract a large number of dedicated old users who are very loyal. These players usually have a mature gaming mindset and have formed solid gaming habits. The sense of achievement gained through strategic competition in the game further drives their motivation. The combination with match-3 gameplay can effectively overshadow the aesthetic fatigue caused by the repetitive content of match-3 games.
Moreover, SLG games are strategy-based, so most players may need to spend considerable time cultivating their "game cognition" for the game. The long learning time and associated sunk costs and financial costs of SLG compared to "hardcore" gameplay usually make players reluctant to leave, gradually becoming "hardcore" players. Therefore, in terms of SLG player loyalty and user stickiness, they typically outperform other game types.
Thus, from the perspective of these two game models, whether it is match-3 gameplay or SLG gameplay, both have a strong ability to attract user stickiness. The SLG model can compensate for the game fatigue caused by the repetitive content of the match-3 game model, forming a complementarity, and the SLG game model can also significantly consume the output of the match-3 game model, promoting a positive cycle of the economic ecosystem.
Therefore, from the gameplay perspective, "Crypto Rumble," with its combination of match-3 + SLG, cleverly leverages a vast potential audience, making it particularly ingenious 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 barriers, poor experiences, high costs, and rough production, making many players hesitant to praise them.
In fact, Zypher Network is addressing the issue of insufficient infrastructure 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 game 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 game action individually. This method not only significantly reduces gas fees but also ensures a no-lag 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, making it easier to distribute 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 with P2E as a supplement, 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 this vast user pool through the Telegram ecosystem, leveraging its unique game content and excellent gaming experience to become a hit in the Web3 gaming field.