KubeBird

KubeBird is an arcade shoot-em-up NFT game that I was a freelancer for in 2021. It was also my first experience in designing crypto game.

Duration: 3 months (2021)
Team size: 10~12
Roles: Senior Game Design, Level Design, PvP Design, Game Balancing
Genre: Arcade, Shoot-em-up, Bullet hell, NFT
Platform: Ios, Android

Prologue

In 2021, the craze of NFT games hit on Vietnam with all the cash flow and FOMO from investors and users. I was staying out of the trends for more than half of the year because I wanted to have a broader view and time to understand and judge the situation better.

Most of games in the market around that time are just scam projects or too boring to be even called a game. It was pure chance that I received an offer from a shoot-em-up game team to be their senior game designer and tackle all the hard parts in system design for them.

I wasn't going to accept the job at first. But thinking that this is a good chance to understand more about this new niche in the industry, and shoot-em-up was one of my fortes, I onboarded the team.

PvE & PvP Designs

I was in charge for the in-game designs, which contain things like UX, stat balance, level design, enemies & bosses behaviors tree. Later, it also included the design for PvP game mode.

One of the most interesting things is design the bosses' move sets. As a bullet hell game, I had to make the battle hard enough to make players feeling stressful, but still totally beatable. The core gameplay also demands a design so that each play session shouldn't be longer than 10 mins, so the balancing between bosses' HP, dmg, and skill patterns were carefully crafted and tested.

Epilogue

Even though my time in this project was short, it sure gave me enough time and experience about basic of crypto games. The gameplay is fun and challenging enough to distinct it from all other ponzi games. It made me wonder if someday NFT games can have their own solid positions in the game market?