Fight Me if you dare: innovative Nekki studio enters Web3 gaming

Nekki’s games have been downloaded over a billion times — but their first Web3 game, Fight Me, is something special. Evolve your NFT fighters, manage battle squads, win precious Boost Cola and unlock abilities in this exciting Web3 game.

Nekki’s unique approach and journey to Web3

Hi there, we’re Nekki — a Cyprus game developer and publisher of high-quality action and strategy games. You’ve probably heard of Shadow Fight, Vector, or 11x11 — all of them are our franchises. With 20 years’ worth of Web2 gaming expertise under our belt, we are now building Fight Me — a Web3 fighting game on Polygon with NFTs, Play-to-Own elements, and a unique approach to gameplay.

Nekki’s profile

• Over 1 billion downloads;
• 12+ million fans in our games’ social accounts;
• Shadow Fight series is among the world’s leading fighting franchises, with 4 regularly updated mobile releases;
• 95% organic growth: Nekki’s games become popular without paid advertising;
• Our experience is not limited to mobile gaming: we’ve also released several successful browser and social games, in addition to an upcoming PC and console cyberpunk game, Spine;
• Nekki is the creator of Cascadeur, a free animation tool to empower indie developers. Over 10 years, Cascadeur has amassed an audience of over 100,000 animators;
• 250+ professionals on the Nekki team.

They say that mass NFT adoption will come only when major game publishers enter the market — and they are right. Being one of those pioneers first in the Web2 gaming niches, we have all it takes to succeed in the Web3 arena.

We have a great track record building games that promote themselves. Players happily spread the word, because our games are exciting and invoke real emotions. We are laser-focused on quality and originality, and our approach is long-term. It’s not our style to launch something half-baked, make some money, and move on. The ongoing popularity of all our game franchises proves that we’ve chosen the right path.

We manage to do this again and again because all of the team is passionate about each of our projects. A year ago, when we first decided to enter Web3, we did it with the same passion and the same “player-first” attitude. Design, gameplay, rewards, onboarding — everything in Fight Me works in synergy to create a product that gamers will come back to again and again.

We’ve been following Web3 gaming for a long time, and we also see its tremendous potential. You can do things with it that you’d never be able to do in Web2, such as give players full ownership of their in-game assets and the possibility to monetize them. But Fight Me will be accessible and interesting for our Web2 community, too. The game’s potential audience includes all those hundreds of millions of people who are playing our games.

We have the team, the expertise, and the resources to build truly satisfying and interesting NFT games. Games that are immersive, genre-bending, and great to look at. NFT games that both Web2 and Web3 users will actually want to play. On top of that, we wholeheartedly believe in the project’s idea and our own capabilities, so that we fund Fight Me! on our own and don’t involve third-party investors.

Fight Me in a nutshell

Fight Me is a Play-to-Own idle fighting browser game with evolving NFTs. Sounds complicated? Let’s break it down.

• Play-to-Own (P2O) is the new Web3 paradigm that is replacing Play-to-Earn (P2E). In P2O, you play in order to acquire valuable resources. You can always sell them, of course, but you will maximize your assets’ value by holding and upgrading them.

In Fight Me, your NFT fighter becomes more and more valuable as you train, unlock abilities, win battles, and so on. Before you sell the NFT in the secondary market, it’s worth investing time in evolving your fighter to make it more attractive to squad managers (see below).

The players get rewards for actually playing the game and for inviting new users. You can earn prizes by recruiting new players for your squad — and when that squad wins tournaments together. Tournaments add another source of fun and value for you as a fighting club manager.

That’s where the name Fight Me comes from: tell everyone about the game and challenge them to come and fight you or your team. The more you spread the word about Fight Me, the better your reward.

The game has an element of a treasure hunt to it, except you chase characters, not items. As a club manager, you’ll need specific rare fighters to complete your team: someone with a particular pet or weapon, for example. So you’ll look for one in the secondary market to buy from a player who has worked on evolving their NFT.

• IDLE: a gaming format where you can simply kick back, watch, develop characters, and win trophies — without investing much time into active interactions.
• Fighting: you’ll be surprised, but there aren’t many good 1-on-1, PvP fighting games out there. Our own Shadow Fight 4: Arena is one of the best-known. And since Fight Me combines active battles with the IDLE approach, the game will never feel like a daily grind.

• Evolving NFTs: our biggest technical innovation. An NFT fighter can unlock power-ups: abilities, equipment, and even pets. The two ways to get those power-ups are fighting and inviting friends to the game.
• Browser-based: you can play Fight Me in any browser, on desktop or mobile, without installing any apps.

We use the same long-term strategic approach with Fight Me as we did with Shadow Fight: we are building a game that can grow and remain popular for years.

Wait, but what is the game about?

Ahhh, the lore. We’ll have a separate post about this, but here’s the gist. Fight Me takes place on a smallish planet that is one huge megapolis. This Asteroid City has it all, from slums to palaces and from a space port to a crazy Squid Game-like theme park where the fighting takes place.

The city (and planet) is controlled by Boost Corp, a corporation producing Boost Cola. It’s a drink that gives you special powers… only you never know which! Get a sip of Boost — and you may find yourself with super strength, or a weapon teleported from a different dimension, or even a pet.

Boost Cola is how all NFT power-ups work in Fight Me — and the single most valuable resource that you’ll fight for. Every team starts out in a poor or average neighborhood and needs to fight its way up the ladder, stocking up on Boost Cola along the way. You can join various fractions to get access to their tech and gear, and the ultimate goal is to become champions of the City.

The next steps for Fight Me!

We’ll publish the first cinematic trailer for Fight Me soon, followed by a playable beta this fall or maybe in Q1 2024. Lots of other great stuff is scheduled for 2023: a White Paper, an NFT pre-sale, full NFT evolution mechanics, etc.

If you join early, you can expect lots of perks and a privileged position in the community. So keep reading our blogs and don’t miss the next update. In the meantime, check out the official Fight Me website and join us on Discord and Twitter.