The Pit

The Pit is an NFT game that allows players to buy and trade unique creatures and enter them into Battle Royale-style fights to the death. How they perform in "The Pit" is determined by their stats, the game AI and a healthy dose of chaos to create an exciting and unpredictable contest.

By minting the creatures as NFTs, the idea is that each creature is unique both for its prowess in the game (or lack of it!) and as a piece of one-of-a-kind digital art. The smart contract contained within each NFT includes both the creature art, and stats and attributes that determine how the characters perform in-game. It's like Pokemon - the stronger your creature the better they will do in battles.

The team behind The Pit brought us in to design and build the game, create the smart contracts, mint the NFTs and build a web application allowing players to connect their crypto wallets and enter battles.

Getting the product to market quickly was a key part of their strategy so we prioritised speed to ensure we hit their deadlines. We got the first version of the website up within a couple of days and gave ourselves only a few short weeks for the development of the game and smart contract.

We also handled the drop – releasing the first generation of the creature NFTs to buyers. Buyers could choose one of four creature types – snakes, chickens, dogs or beetles. They were then randomly allocated their unique creature with their stats and attributes determined according to a rarity table. This kept things fair and meant some lucky players ended up with a rare and valuable creature.

We started by creating a marketing website to build hype before the launch. In the NFT world this part is crucial - you need to generate interest to ensure your project gains early momentum. Working with their artists, we put together a concept for the site that told the story of The Pit - a dark city where creatures compete in the underworld to survive.

We also built a web app and MetaMask integration to enable players to connect their wallets, view upcoming battles and enter their NFTs. This is built using Strapi for the CMS and ReactJS for the frontend.

The game itself is an all-vs-all fight to the death with gameplay determined by the game AI. Creatures are dropped into the battle, there is a countdown then the game starts. The creatures run around the map attacking each other until only one remains alive. The creatures' starting points are randomly allocated, so it's the luck of the draw which other creatures they end up encountering first. The map is a top-down view in a retro pixel art style.

The smart contract is an ERC-721 token written in Solidity on the Ethereum blockchain. The creature image, stats and attributes are stored as metadata. Like all NFTs, owners are able to buy and sell them as they choose on the open market via OpenSea.

The Pit launched in December 2021 with the initial mint selling out within a few hours. We continue to work with the team behind The Pit helping to build out their roadmap. View the project at thepitnft.com.