Introduction

Undead Blocks is a AAA zombie survival web3 game built on the Ethereum Network. The game puts a new spin on the dominant play-to-earn model in the industry, called kill-to-earn. In the game, players must survive the incoming onslaught of brain-dead zombies as they come, wave after wave. Pull out your tactical gear and enter the world of undead zombies to kill and earn.

Rank high on the daily leaderboard (killboard) and complete challenges to earn gold ZBUX that can be converted into other digital currencies. Additionally, players will earn standard ZBUX that can be used to upgrade their weapon loadouts.

Lore

The game follows the established lore of a zombie apocalypse and doesn’t follow any particular story. The premise and gameplay are simple: you’re one of the last survivors of a terrible zombie apocalypse. Now it's up to you to survive, and believe us, it won't be easy. You’ll need to kill an ever-increasing horde of zombies attacking you from every side. Your only chance at survival is your tactical skills and a powerful weapon set.

Gameplay

Game Modes

Undead Blocks features multiple game modes, keeping the gameplay engaging for those of you that get bored easily:

Solo: Survive wave after wave of zombie attacks alone in the dark. good for practicing your shooting and running skills.

Squads: Gather your friends and rain hellfire on the zombies in groups of 2-4. What better way to catch up with friends than to thwart zombies? 

SpeedRun: Kill a predetermined number of zombies in record time!

Massacre: Venture on a zombie killing spree. Compete to reach the top of the leaderboards and earn exciting rewards.

NFT Mode

No matter which mode you’re playing in, the objective is pretty much the same: to annihilate as many zombies as possible. However, the rate at which you earn rewards by killing these zombies varies based on the type of loadout you’re using. The thing is, if you use an NFT weapon loadout, you stand to earn more. Every zombie you kill in the game has the chance to drop ZBUXs; however, the frequency of these drops depends on the weapon loadout you’re using.

In simple words, non-NFT weapons = less rewards; NFT weapon loadout = more rewards.

Dynamics

Players enter the game with a base weapon and a tactical knife. Increasingly advanced and powerful weapons get unlocked as you make progress in the game. Players earn XP points for every zombie they kill, with bonus points for killing them with headshots. Remember to aim high while shooting to earn more rewards.

XP can be used in-game to unlock the following items:

1. Weapons that you have included in the loadout
2. Grenades and Molotov cocktails
3. Perks: These are abilities you can gain by drinking special drinks.
4. News Areas. 

Available Weapons

Here’s a list of weapons you’ll find within the game.

• 3 melee weapons (knife, bat, axe)
• 2 handguns (M1911, revolver)
• MP5 (SMG) 
• 2 assault rifles (AKM, F1)
• 2 shotguns (R870, double barrel)
• Hunting Rifle (Long Range)
• Crossbow (Specialty)

Economy(Tokenomics)

There are three currencies in the economy of Undead Blocks: $UNDEAD, $Wagyu, Gold ZBUX, and Standard ZBUX.

ZBUX

ZBUX is the off-chain reward currency of the game and comes in two variants: standard ZBUX and gold ZBUX. Here’s how these reward currencies differ:

1. You cannot exchange standard ZBUX for fiat money or any other currency.
2. Legendary and rare items cannot be unlocked using standard ZBUX.
3. Gold ZBUX can only be obtained randomly through ZBOXes in Undead Blocks game modes, while standard ZBUX are awarded after each match.

You can use ZBUX for the following activities:

1. Upgrading your weapon loadout
2. Purchasing weapons, skins, and characters
3. Purchasing loot boxes
4. trading gold ZBUX for fiat money.

$UNDEAD

The $UNDEAD token is the primary on-chain currency of the Undead Blocks ecosystem; it's also the governance token of the game. Being an on-chain token, it can be traded on centralized as well as decentralized exchanges, unlike its off-chain counterpart, ZBUX.

The three primary use cases of the $UNDEAD Token are:

1. Stake2Mint Program: As we described above, players can stake their $UNDEAD token holdings for a fixed period to earn APY rewards and a weapon loadout. Currently, Stake2Mint allows players to lock their tokens for 6, 9, and 12 months. Players get to immediately use the weapon loadout to make more money playing the game while passively earning APY rewards from their staked funds.
2. Loot Coffins: Players can buy loot coffins (mystery boxes filled with in-game items) at a discounted rate.
3. Holders of the $UNDEAD token will gain voting rights on decisions such as -Deciding future loadouts and the Game’s Roadmap 

Before we get into the weeds of Undead Blocks' tokenomic structure, let’s look at some of the unique economic features that it brings to the table, such as: 

Stable in-game reward currency

Undead Blocks has a stable off-chain reward currency (Gold ZBUX) that will never fluctuate in value. The price volatility of digital assets is a big concern for Web3 players. Most players prefer to liquidate or trade their earned assets to mitigate the risk of a sudden loss in value due to volatility. Undead Blocks takes away this concern by introducing a stable reward currency, gold ZBux. This digital currency is pegged at $0.10. However, this solution does bring some centralization issues to the table. We are not exactly sure at the moment how Undead Blocks will maintain investors' trust in its centralized model.

Integrated Sinks to Retain Players

According to the developers, most Web3 games fail to design useful and complementary sinks in their gameplay. Sinks can be features, services, and products on which players can spend their earned tokens. These sinks ensure that the game's economy stays balanced. Undead Blocks solves this problem by using weapon upgrades as a sink. Here, players are incentivized to spend tokens to upgrade their weapons for vanity, competitiveness, and increased earning potential.

Stake 2 Mint

Stake2Mint is another sink strategy implemented by Undead Blocks wherein players are incentivized to lock their $UNDEAD holdings in return for APY rewards and a weapons loadout. Players can instantly access this weapon loadout upon staking the token and use it as per their liking. Some of the possible options are to play and earn gold zbux with the weapon loadout, lend it to other players, or sell it in the open market.

Stake2Mint's apocalypse version comes with the following weapon loadouts:

1. Rookie LoadOut: Get this weapon loadout consisting of a knife, pistol, and pump shotgun by staking 1500 undead.
2. Commander Loadout: Get a weapon loadout of a knife, pistol, baseball bat, M1A, and semi-auto rifle for 2000 dollars.
3. Veteran Loadout: The OP weapon loadout of Knife, Pistol, Battle Axe, AKM Assault Rifle, RPG, and 1 Random Perk for 2500 Undead.

Token Distribution

Let's look at the token distribution of undead blocks (as specified in their whitepaper).

• Play to Earn Fund: 27%

The "Kill-to-Earn" fund will maintain reserves of gold and zbucks to ensure that players are paid rewards for their in-game escapades. The biggest share of the $UNDEAD token supply is reserved for collateralizing gold ZBUX.

• Undead Staking Program: 25%

The APY rewards for staking USD will be paid out from this pool. 25% of the token supply is reserved for the Stake2Mint program.

• Ecosystem Pool: 23%

This pool is kept in place to take care of the miscellaneous expenses that will be used for game development and maintenance.

• Team: 20% 

 Token supply was allocated to pay the team.

• Initial Liquidity: 1%

Initial circulating supply released for market-making: 

Supply released on centralized exchanges: 0.5%

Supply released on decentralized exchanges: 0.5%

•  Private Sale: 4%

The portion to be sold to venture capital partners and private investors

StakeHolders

Undead Blocks has alliances with some really impressive partners.

Here’s a list:

• ImmutableX (a base-layer platform especially designed for Web3 games)
• Animoca Brands (a leadingg software development and VC company in the blockchain space)
• Double Peak (family office with major investments in digital assets and the blockchain ecosystem)
• GenBlock Capital (a veteran investment firm in the crypto space)
• Exnetwork Capital is an investment fund that specializes in decentralized projects.
• Total number of unique addresses that hold $UNDEAD: 5102 ( data taken from CMC onNovemberh5v, 2022) 

Stats Table

$UNDEAD Token Stats

• Max. Supply: 500 million $U
• Circulating Supply: 15 Million USD
• Current Price: $0.5666
• All-time high: $2.19 (down 78%).
• All-Time Low: $0.5539 (up 2.29%)
• Current market capitalization based on circulating supply: $8,498.852

Deflationary Mechanics

The creators of Undead Blocks are keenly focused on the sustainability of their project. They have deliberately designed sinks that’ll keep the token from inflating into oblivion. The USD received for in-app purchases are immediately burned (i.e., taken out of circulation). meaning that every time a player buys a skin, a weapon loadout, or a loot coffin, they're directly decreasing the token supply. Which means with each purchase, they influence the token to become more valuable. "Scarcity plus demand begets increased value."

Competition

Surprisingly, there are numerous titles in the web3 gaming space that feature kill-to-escape mechanics. Arguably, every Web3-based first-person shooter game can be categorized as a kill-to-earn game. We won’t list every single FPS in this review, though, only the ones that are big enough to compete with Undead Blocks. Here’s a breakdown:

• Ev.io: Ev.io is a dynamic FPS in which players engage in action-packed shoot-outs to win crypto rewards. The game incorporates elements like teleportation, powerups, and super deflection to distinguish its gameplay from other first-person shooters. Players earn "e" tokens for winning deathmatches. 10000 "e" tokens are worth $5.
• Arsenal: Imagine if CS:GO had a Web3 counterpart. Guess what you don’t need to imagine any more: Fabwelt's latest FPS Arsenal literally feels like you’re playing Counter-Strike with an interesting addition, i.e., earning money. Players win XP points for winning matches. 150 XP points can be converted into a WELT token, which is currently worth 0.002 at the moment (5 November 2022).

• BR1 Infinite: BR1-Infinite is a risk-based shooter game where players pay $1 every time they respawn and receive $1 for every kill. BR1 Infinite can be the most profitable or financially destructive game that you’ll ever play. The risk is real in this one, so get your tactical skills up to speed before trying this one.
• MetaOps: MetaOps is a first-person shooter where you can team up with friends to put your tactical skills to the test or inversely battle against each other to find out who's the best. The game gives off some serious Call of Duty vibes, but it has a long way to go before it touches that level. The kill to earn mechanics of MetaOps will reward players for every kill with in-game tokens. However, the game has yet to unveil its token.

Technology

The platforms used for creating this amazing zombie hellscape are:

• Unity Engine
• Photon
• PostgreSQL
• AWS services (Gamelift, EC2, Lambda, SQS, WAF, RDS, ElastiCache, CloudWatch)

Community

Like we always say, community makes or breaks any Web3 project. Let’s look at the social strength of Undead Blocks across various social channels: 

Discord: 21,744 members

Twitter : 51.8k followers

Telegram: 5367 Members

Social Score: 1076 (as per playtoearn.net)

In Closing 

Undead Blocks is one of the most exciting games that we have come across this year. It’s a title that proves that Web3 games are evolving and getting better with time. Just one year ago, one of the primary criticisms of Web3 games was that they are not as interesting and engaging as their Web2 counterparts, but now we have games like Undead Blocks that outright debunk those claims. As undead blocks, it's one of the most fun games that we have played in a while. Another thing that we noticed while covering Undead Blocks is that the developers have given great thought to designing the game to be sustainable. Its cleverly integrated sinks are going to make the USD token more valuable as the market stabilizes, benefiting both the players and investors of the game. Well, then, what are you waiting for? Head to Undead Blocks and take out some zombies.

Ciao!