Polkacity NFT Game Design

4 min readJun 23, 2021

The company tintash has started working on the Polkacity game. They will work fast and hard and we are expecting them to create a wonderful game, as they have done before; check out this game from their portfolio:

Here is a screenshot from this previous game:

Some of their clients include BBC Worldwide, Bed Bath & Beyond, Digital Chocolate; see more at their website. This is a Stanford Alumni-led Dev Studio since 2008.

We will work with tintash and another company to develop the game, and of course, heed recommendations from the PolkaCity community along the way. We have finished our contract audits by Certik and we are about to release website V2 and the marketplace, along with other improvements. We plan to take 11 months to deliver all stages of the game, finished and polished. We are expecting the game to be ready to be downloaded in Q4 2021. We plan to take around 9 weeks for design, 7 weeks for Art and UI, 20 weeks for development, and 6 weeks for Bug Fixing and Polishing.

The game development is poised to include many engineers, including, but not excluded to, a Technical Project Manager, Art assets and UI, Game Design, Unity Engineer, QA Engineer. The game design includes gameplay mechanics, progression, and economy. The economic aspect will receive a lot of attention from us as it will need to be balanced to carry out the game forward. We plan to bring updates and balances going forward, actively supporting the game in addition to releasing new NFTs.

The UI Screen work includes Screen for sign-up, Screen for login, Main screen UI, Screen for avatar customization, and Heads-up Display (HUD). The loading screen before a game round will have a loading progress bar. The startup screen will include a usual settings menu and scrollable selection menus for generic game settings.

World Generation will include the basic terrain setup of Polka City. This will include Landscaping, Single Town Block Setup, and Full World Setup.
A template of a small repeatable block that accommodates dummy and NFT assets will be created, which will also accommodate roads and other infrastructure. Using town blocks and controlled NFTs placement, a complete polka city world will be created.

The game will include a tutorial and will include Avatar Customization, City View, Street View, 3rd Person view, Club, Art Gallery, and the other buildings represented by NFTs. The game will guide the user to create an avatar in a step-by-step popup dialogue style. Screen for avatar customization will have five tabs for customization, and you will be able to change the skin color, hair, gender, shirt, and pants of your avatar. There will also be various predefined skin and hair colors and premade shirts.

Game Controls will include separate controls for each of the views. The city view will be controlled by a mouse and keyboard. Zooming will be controlled via the mouse scroll wheel. User avatar movement and direction will be controlled by the keyboard and the view angle will be controlled by the mouse.

We plan to have a text-based chat and a voice-based chat within the game. For example, in the art gallery, you will be able to view the art NFTs being sold and chat with the others as you are strolling down the alley. A basic template will be set up for the presentation of an art item inside the art gallery. UI for Selection, pop-up, action buttons, and others as needed will be provided within the game.

View Types in the Game

The city view will include an interactive guide to control the city view. This view will show users the polka city world from above, similar to Simcity. It will include panning, orbiting, and zooming.
The street view will have an interactive guide to control the player in the street view. This view will follow the car or the user's avatar. It will be an angled top-down view with a small range of zooming. As the user moves, the view will follow the user from behind. Driving will be something similar to GTA 2. Users can drive around at cruise speed and can turn around with fair ease. Simple collision detection will be done and appropriate actions will be taken accordingly.
The 3rd person view will have an interactive guide to control the player and interact with other objects in 3rd person view. This view will be used inside NFT buildings. The user avatar will be able to view the building interior and other user avatars from behind the shoulder angle of the main avatar. View centralization will also be included. User avatar will be able to move in any direction and will face the movement direction. Avatar can interact with other avatars and objects when in their vicinity via context-sensitive UI.