We wrote this article to share a high-level overview of our design choices with races and classes within ZiberBugs. It’s an intricate and very cool system that’s neatly tied together to be both functional and appealing.
Background
The number of video games containing different races and different classes with different bonus traits and abilities is countless. When designing an autobattler, this could arguably be considered mandatory. But how would we create a game with defined character races, that also allows a vast variety of breeding? After seeing other successful NFT Games, and how breeding played a big role in its success, we were determined to include a similar version in ours. But the method of allowing it over all races and classes in a way that felt exciting and reasonable at the same time remained a problem.
We wanted to have something more spectacular than equal-looking humanoids in our battlegrounds. At the same time, our vision was clear — there shouldn’t be any racial breeding limitations. This is where our minds started hovering towards insects. Bugs procreating over racial borders didn’t feel as alien. Instead, we saw an opportunity. This could enable hybrids between bugs as our way of defining both races and classes.
We started exploring the idea of revolving ZiberBugs around the same thing as some species of insects do in real life — having a queen as the only female, while all other bugs are male. The idea originated from trying to come up with solutions for the NFT inflation problem. We didn’t want to allow exponential growth of units in the game, a problem with which certain other NFT games are struggling. Therefore, eggs that are produced on a per-active-account basis could put a threshold of how many new units could be created. When experimenting with modelling this out, the queen (and the race) then became account-specific, and something that each player gets to choose when starting the game. With this model, it became apparent that every battle bug will possess one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. The X chromosome will be inherited from the queen (hence represent the race), and the Y chromosome will obviously be inherited from the father. The father will possess a set of genes evolved for its battle class (a tank needs genes providing health/carpace bonuses etc), and as the offspring is inheriting these, it is only appropriate that the class is also inherited within the Y chromosome.
Races
There are three races in the world of ZiberBugs: Beetles, Arachnids and Flyers. Beetles are focused on melee/ground combat, while Arachnids like to battle from range, engaging both ground and air units. Flyers are airborne, hence untargetable by ground attacks. The race of a bug is determined by the X chromosome — the race of the queen that laid the egg.
Classes
Each race also has an innate battle class, transmitted through the Y chromosome. Flyers are attack damage focused, Arachnids are ability focused and Beetles are tanks. Since the Y chromosome is inherited from the father, who is bred with certain class genes in mind, it correlates neatly with inheriting the stat genes as well.
These 9 different combinations define our battle bugs. Each of these will have a unique name, appearance and a set of base stats. Its genes will determine bonus stats, one passive ability and one Ultimate ability. We will discuss genes and abilities in further detail in an upcoming post, but as a small spoiler, there will be a multitude of possibilities for each ability of each bug, based on what genes it inherits.
Breeding
So how exactly does breeding work? Which bugs can breed which? To be able to breed an Arachnid, you have to have chosen the Arachnid queen. The father (ie one of your battle bugs) passes on his Y chromosome, which defines the class. So if the father is a Beetle Tank, and your queen is an Arachnid, the offspring will be an Arachnid Tank. Breeding will also be discussed in further detail in an upcoming article, coming soon!
We will reveal a bug every monday, having started this week. In the reveal, you will get a view of the visual appearance and an explanation of its role and strengths.
Stay tuned!
The ZiberTeam
https://ziberbugs.io
