Fantasy Sports games have always held their own in the gaming world despite their seemingly niche audience. With the advancement of Web3 integration, it’s no surprise that there will be projects attempting to create a sport-based game in the blockchain and one of them is Cyball, a Football management simulator in the Binance smart chain. Let’s take a look at how this futuristic game of soccer holds up to its web-2 ancestors.

Background

Developed by Aaron Yee, Long Vuong, Tin Tran and Kevin Bui, Cyball is a game that combines the action of football simulation with the strategy delivered by card games to create something unique that challenges players to make decisions on the fly while managing your characters in a 3v3 match. **
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Set in a futuristic world where Cyblocs roam freely due to the heroic deeds of one Space Boy Fusk, The Cyborgs created a world game station where they can face other people and challenge themselves in the game of technology-infused football.**
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Cyblocs are NFTs that come in different classes: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Legendary. These classes will affect the base stats of your Cybloc and its room for growth that they possess as well as their innate abilities called traits. They also come with different skills that facilitate their roles inside the match like how a goalkeeper will have better defensive stats than a striker who will tend to have a higher attack chance.

Graphics

With the technological theme that the developers chose, the futuristic aesthetic the game provides is a treat to the eyes. Although it’s more cartoony and chibi-looking with its 2D characters moving on a football field that’s reminiscent of Rocket League’s. It packs its own appeal and the animation isn’t too jarring to look at. I just wish that the characters had small animation cutscenes when they are about to execute a move as they just look like they’re jumping up and down as the metal soccer ball bounces off of their heads.

Gameplay

In order to play the game, players must have 3 Cyblocs as you need to form a team of 3 similar to Axie Infinity. It also uses an energy system where players get to start with 60 energy which will reset daily. Players will have to play around the skills that each of their characters have to elevate their chances of scoring as the player with the highest score will be the victor.
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Although they provided a PVE game mode, Cyball is a mostly PVP experience. There’s four game modes currently available: 

• Exhibition - A casual 3v3 match that will provide the main Play-to-Earn mechanics in the game.

• League - This is a more high-stakes mode where players compete to rise to the top of the leaderboards. This game mode requires 7 Cyblocs instead of the usual 3 with 2 of them counting as substitutes as they can’t change this when the season starts.

• Tournament - More of an event, this is their form of professional matches as it requires an invitation from the organizers to enter this mode. This will also use 7 Cyblocs.

• Training - A non-stressful mode where players can level up their Cyblocs although the p2e rewards are not present here. 

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A thing to note is their mentoring system which is the equivalent of breeding in other NFT games. You can create a new Cybloc by having two Cyblocs “mentor” the new one. This will also transfer the skills of the mentors to the trainee as well as a chance to create a new skill. So players will have to keep in mind the rarity of their Cyblocs while also paying attention to the synergy of their skills and traits to form a competitive team.

Tokenomics

Implementing a dual token system, Cyball’s economy revolves around its CYB and CBT tokens which are its governance and reward/utility tokens respectively. CBT is used for mentoring and hiring a coach while CYB is used for governance, staking and special rewards for high-performing players.

Final Thoughts

Cyball is a game for players who like a change of pace from the usual management simulator that most sports games contain while also innovating on its foundations by adding the turn-based strategy card games possess to create a unique gaming experience. If you are a fan of football or card games, maybe even both, then I think Cyball is definitely worth checking out.