Interviews | Preferred Partner Feature

Interview: CleGames discuss what makes its blockchain tower defence title, Infinity Party Battle, stand out in the web3 world

Interview: CleGames discuss what makes its blockchain tower defence title, Infinity Party Battle, stand out in the web3 world

Infinity Party Battle is a brand new play-to-earn tower defence title released for Android by South Korean studio, CleGames.

Combining masterfully crafted collectible card elements with RPG features and tower defence gameplay, Infinity Party Battle tasks players with fielding their strongest team of 5 characters in fast paced arena battles. Players will need to make use of magic cards, upgrades, and strategically utilise their team skills in order to clear the board of enemy monsters faster than their opponents.

The game features a huge roster of adorable heroes and a sophisticated progression system where every PvP battle you win will see you advance up the leaderboards and earn INFI crypto tokens.

yt
Subscribe to Pocket Gamer on

CleGames’ Chief Game Designer, Joseph Lim, recently spoke with us about the development of its latest blockchain game, and told us, in his words, what makes it stand out in the web3 world.

What do you think your Infinity Party Battle offers that you can’t get from any other title on the app stores?

While there are a number of common real-time PVP tower defence games on the market, our Infinity Party Battle features quite an unusual Co-op Battle mode – here, two random players are matched in real-time to fend off monsters together. The game really takes an unexpected twist when you suddenly get to cooperate with another team, rather than try to smash it. You can even create a private battle room to play any of these modes with your actual friend, rather than a randomly selected player.

It’s also quite strategic with so many things to consider! Firstly, all of the 5 characters you select on the team and upgrade are important. Even more than that – how they balance each other out, and how they stand against other combinations of enemy teams or bosses. Second but not less important is your set of Magic Cards – are they defensive, offensive or boosting? But then strategy pro level comes with the right timing - the way you manage to summon, move and merge characters, hold on to or use your existing magic cards during the battle depending on the situation and your estimations.

What were your inspirations for making the game?

Firstly, who doesn’t love tower defence? We certainly do, as it’s a really fun and accessible mobile genre.

And as a studio that developed a few successful classic RPGs, we thought what if we take a tower defence base and enrich it with our expertise, adding RPG-like characters, upgrades, strategic magic cards and so on. Now with hero transcendence, for example, players can create some really strong and exquisitely designed fantasy-style characters – these will even be released as NFTs!

What challenges come with developing a blockchain game and how do they differ from those faced with traditional mobile titles?

It is really as challenging to make a good blockchain game as it is to make a good traditional title. Our three main principles ended up being:

  • Create a fun and appealing gameplay in the first place
  • Make it interesting to play even when there are no tokens at stake
  • Reward players with coins fairly and accordingly to their efforts

I would say all the above were particularly hard to balance, as there is a great variety of elements that had to be taken into account. At this point after open beta, we are ready to say that things have extremely improved in the process.

The trick with blockchain games is, you can’t just simply fix everything by giving more token rewards, as this will inevitably lead to token price drop – so we tried our best to create a lot of intertwined content and many fun ways to use tokens in-game.

Which part of the game are you personally the most proud of and why?

One of the game's contents lets you unlock new Magic Cards by collecting Trophy points in Battle mode. The more trophies you have – the better cards you can unlock and use, so the system both creates a reason to keep playing Battle mode, stimulates that excitement of working your way up to reach a goal, and finally rewards you with the sense of achievement. While character strategy is certainly important, magic cards used at the right moment can decide the whole outcome of the battle and let you progress to much higher waves in Co-op. Mastering them takes time and practice, but that’s what gives it an extra zest.

Do you have anything planned in terms of future updates for Infinity Party Battle and, if so, can you give us any details of what these might include?

Absolutely! We plan to keep adding new events, battle modes, characters, magic cards and a few types of game NFTs.

For example, the new Competition mode will allow players to test their skills one-on-one against monsters and get rewarded INFI based on the highest wave they achieve. As for NFTs, we are now preparing to release NFT Magic Cards and possibly NFT game characters – both of these will be stronger than their non-NFT versions and can actually be used in the game.

There are a lot of other ideas in discussion, such as RPG-style equipment items that can be crafted and applied to characters for extra buffs or skills, or rewarding Surprise Boxes that can be randomly found anywhere within the game. We are also considering integrations with other web3 games and are already building a few more titles on blockchain – after all, such accessibility and interconnection is the definition of the metaverse we seem to be entering!