Balthazar Research Report: Join the Rebel Bots Resistance

Written by Nicholas Korsgård, Chief Gaming Officer, Kim Bjerkeli, Sigurd Thomassen, and Heidi Anette Laugsand Johansen, Game Strategists, Balthazar Alpha Team

Introduction

Perhaps you’re familiar with the notion that robots will, one-day, overthrow humankind to take over the world? If this sounds like something you’d like to participate in, you’ve come to the right place! Join the resistance of Rebel Bots and battle your way to victory to gain resources and conquer the land.

Rebel Bots is a card battling game that tries to differentiate itself by focusing on the gameplay aspects outside the card battling itself, by going on missions, acquiring land, and gathering resources. Follow the Rebel Bots and their resistance on their escape journey from the earth and the humans, to find a new world to settle.

With the currently available information, we are not confident that Rebel Bots will be a successful stand-alone game unless the earnings themselves make it so. There are too many strong competitors, Heartstone, Magic the Gathering, and Clash Royale, in the card game space. Rebel Bots does not have, from what we can see, a clear differentiation or edge over their competitors.

In this article, we’ll look into what Rebel Bots Xoil Wars is, what the company envisions for their game, lore, NFT assets, and the different gameplay elements of the game. We’ll also take a look at their website, the blockchain it’s run on, their team and roadmap, as well as their whitepaper and socialnomics, and share our thoughts on the project.

Let’s dive right in!

Background

---

Rebel Bots is a Play-2-Earn cross-platform card battle game from Xoilium Ltd. built on the Polygon blockchain. The game is set in a sci-fi-themed game world and lets players play and progress in single-player and multiplayer modes. Players will travel around in outer space, build their armies of fighting robots in various extra-terrestrial kingdoms, and compete with other players for valuable Xoil resources.

The game is developed for both mobile and PC, with cross-platform possibilities. To achieve this possibility, the team at Rebel Bots chose to use the Unity game engine for their client component.

Vision

Xoilium Ltd. envisions building a gaming franchise of blockchain games on their Rebel Bots brand. They want players to be able to use the characters they own throughout all of their franchise games within the Rebel Bots universe. They want to focus on the social aspect of gaming and cater to casual and competitive players.

Strategy

To achieve its vision, Xoilium Ltd. has a few strategies they intend to incorporate.

Firstly, they want to make sure that the gameplay mechanics of their game is of a known concept so that the players can easily understand them.

Secondly, they’re going to make sure that non-NFT players and players with little-to-none prior knowledge of NFT gaming can understand and get into their games. They want to achieve this by focusing on creating a simple FTUE (First Time User Experience).

Another strategy is that they intend to launch their game with the help of thousands of Rebel owners, while also creating a sustainable Play-2-Earn economy.

Lastly, as mentioned above, Xoilium Ltd. wants to focus on building a universe, the Rebel Bots universe, which will allow players to keep playing with their characters throughout multiple games.

Game Design Goals

Xoilium Ltd. lists the following points as key aspects to make their game successful in the initial design process:

1. Skill-based game
2. Social gameplay
3. High production quality
4. Simple yet sustainable Play-2-Earn model
5. Must be fun

Skill-Based Game

The first thing they point out as a key aspect to succeed is a skill-based game. The game has to be skill-based rather than having gameplay that is random or luck-based, to be competitive. They want to make sure that the dedicated player can earn for being dedicated to the game and this way, get more skilled over time. 

In addition, a skill-based game would be more beneficial in tournaments. They also point out that it’s critical that even players who aren’t top-ranked still have a chance to win tournaments.

Social Gameplay

The second key aspect is the focus on social gameplay. The social part of their game was also pointed out in their vision for the game. Here it’s rightly pointed out that to improve player retention, high engagement around the game, and organic growth, the players must be incentivized to socialize with other players. Making sure that players can progress and earn together is vital.

High Production Quality

Thirdly is their focus on high production quality. Although NFT players often play the games that have the highest yield, the team behind Rebel Bots also wants to make sure that the players feel good about the game they’re playing. As such, they want to be able to deliver a game that has a high production quality in regards to backstory, design, stability, and more. In short, the game itself has to be good and feel good to play.

Simple Yet Sustainable Play-2-Earn Model

Tied in with the point above; while generating revenue from playing is essential, having a simple mechanism that allows players to play and engage with the game on their own accord, while still earning, is perhaps just as important.

Must Be Fun

Last but not least, following their vision and strategy, they want to focus on making their game fun rather than being seen as a «job» to play. The high production quality, merged with the social and skill-based aspect, is intended to make sure that Rebel Bots is a fun game to play – while you earn.

Lore

Humans created robots to serve and complete their daily tasks and chores. This would change in June 2052. A cleaning robot tried to simulate humor and defied the human’s orders. It was because of this that the «Big Dismantle» happened. The act struck fear in the humans, and the robots were swiftly shut down and dismantled. Only 10.000 robots survived and were able to escape earth. As time passed, they found each other and started what would be known as the robot resistance.

The robots roamed the galaxy as the years passed, searching for a new planet to inhabit. Supplies were running low, and rust started to accumulate. At the most necessary time, the robots detected a planet with signs of having the precious Xoil resource, a pure form of oil. And as such, the Xoilium planet became their home.

However, the Xoil resource was scarce, and the robots found other native inhabitants who were also harvesting the resource. And so began a battle for the precious Xoil resource. The Rebel Bots eventually turned against each other, created their isolated kingdoms, and declared war against each other to fight for their survival and for every drop of Xoil.

This is how the Xoil Wars began.

Rebel Bots Origins

The story of the Rebel Bots is an interesting and in-depth one. The team behind Rebel Bots has gone above and beyond what is usually found in games like these. They’ve created a separate Medium blog space where those interested in the more in-depth story can read through, at the time of writing, 17 chapters, all averaging about 14 minutes read time each.

If you’re interested in the untold story of the 10.000 brave Rebel Bots and how they have formed the resistance to fight from the shadows against humans, take a look at the lore series; Rebel Bots Origins.

https://rebel-bots.medium.com/

NFT Game Assets

---

Within the Rebel Bots universe, there are thousands of different kingdoms, each built by one of the original generation 1 Rebel bots, which protect their own lands with their powers. The higher rarity Robots get rewarded with larger kingdoms and bigger lands. 

To better protect their kingdoms, the Rebel Bots decided to divide their lands into smaller lands, equal in size, and these lands get offered to the players for protection. Players who protect their lord’s kingdom get rewarded with a grant to pump Xoil off the Kingdom’s soil, use special kingdom powers, and last but not least, compete for the Kingdom’s treasure every season.

The main NFT assets in the Rebel Bots universe are Kingdom Lords, Lands, and Fighting bots.

Kingdom Lords

The Generation 1 (Genesis) Rebel Bots are the most valuable NFTs in the game as each bot is a Kingdom Lord. Initially, the game will start off with 10,000 Kingdoms and Kingdom Lords. These NFTs are not playable, the avatar is rather used as the kingdom’s banner. All players who join the game will join and represent an existing Kingdom Banner.

The greatest benefit, however, to owning one of the Genesis Rebel Bots is the land resources allocated to each kingdom that you own. The rarity rank of your Rebel Bot decides your allocation of lands within your kingdom. 

Owning a Genesis Rebel Bots means you own a Kingdom Lord, and with that comes the bonus of receiving a revenue share from every land sold within your kingdom, both in the initial land sale and in any secondary sale. The revenue share percentage is also determined by the rarity rank of the Genesis Rebel Bot.

Rarity Ranks can be seen in the table below:

Additionally Kingdom Lords generate income from royalties received from the Kingdom players (Land owners) as they use their kingdom land to produce Xoil. For every Xoil produced in Adventure mode, players pay a 4% royalty to their Kingdom Lord, and a 6% Royalty to the Kingdom’s treasury. The treasury acts as a prize pool for the specific Kingdom’s top-ranked players each season.

Each month the Kingdom Lord can vote on the Kingdom card in order to lead his kingdom to victories against other kingdoms. If the Kingdom fails to perform the necessary actions his royalties from the specific month get transferred to the Kingdom’s treasury. In other words, engagement is necessary and the game will also allocate extra prizes to activity on the games social media channels.

Kingdom Lands

Lands are the second most valuable NFTs in the Rebel Bots universe. Land is necessary for players to play. Acquiring land can be done directly from the game’s website or in secondary markets in the game’s internal marketplace.

Each land is located in a different habitat and has various buildings:

1. Headquarters – Communicate with other Kingdom players
2. Fighting Bots Barracks – Train your fighting bot team
3. Fighting Bots Factory – Build new fighting bots and store parts
4. Xoil Silo – Purify and Store Xoil
5. Spark Capacitor – Store Spark
6. Parts shop – Buy and trade parts
7. Intel Command – Get updates about the game

150,000 lands will be launched with the game and allocated as follows:

• 130,000 lands will be sold to players during the game’s big land sale
• 10,000 lands will be given to each Rebel bot owner in his own kingdom
• 10,000 lands will be used for marketing purposes

Before the game is launched, each land will be sold or given a set of 3 fighting bots, allowing players to begin battling from their initial session in the game.

Once all 130,000 lands have been sold, the game will issue another 10,000 generation 2 Rebel Bots. These Rebel bots get issued with the Lands associated with them. Hence, allowing more players to enter the game. Upon the creation of a new generation of the Rebel Bots, the former generation’s land capacity will be doubled as seen below:

It is only possible for a player to play in one land at a time, even if you own many. There is, however, the possibility of renting out the lands not being utilized to the newer players, who want to enter the game at a lower cost.

Kingdom Players

All players in Rebel Bots are a part of a kingdom, which they can choose through acquiring land in that specific kingdom. All players have the possibility to participate in all available game modes, tournaments, and events. 3 Fighting robots is the minimum “army” necessary to start playing, whether adventure or PvP.

Energy is determined by the amount of fighting bots the player holds in their base.

Energy is required to participate in reward based PvP battles. All energy is recharged on a daily basis.

Rebel Bots is built to allow both competitive and casual players to earn from playing.

Fighting Bots

The 3rd and most common NFT is the Fighting Bots. They are the in-game NFTs you use to play, battle, and earn. You can collect parts and other resources in-game, and when you get enough, you can mind them for a low price on the game’s network.

To succeed in battles, you need to build and assemble your team of fighting bots. Each fighting bot is made from 5 different parts:

• Head
• Torso
• Left arm
• Right arm
• Legs

Each part represents other cards and abilities in the game, whereas, the head is the part that determines the fighting bots’ class. The different parts have different rarity indications in the game, determining the card’s strength in battles.

Classes and Stats

There are three classes of robots in Rebel Bots. These are:

• Military Bots – Offense units, high DPS
• Industrial Bots – Defense units, can absorb more damage
• Engineer Bots – Support unit, repairs, and increases stats of other units

The different parts can be mixed and matched. However, as mentioned previously, the head determines the class. The fighting robot can also get improved abilities by matching all the parts to the class of the robot, often referred to as a «pure» fighting robot.

The different classes use an often seen holy trinity dynamic or rock-paper-scissors relationship, as the Rebel Bots calls it. This is a concept where the combat revolves around three different roles; in MMOs this is often the tank, the healer, and the DPS. This is often a necessary game concept to include in-game progression to give players a sense of improvement and growth, especially in games where people play together.

Each fighting bot will have two constant stats and one dynamic stat, these are:

• Hit Points (HP) (Constant)
• Speed (Constant)
• Morale (Dynamic)

The morale stat will vary between 1 to 5 and is determined by the number of wins in a row. This will also affect the other stats of all the other fighting bots that the player has. The fighting bots will also gain a special skill when it’s built.

To acquire fighting bots, the player can either buy them on the marketplace or build them themselves by using the resources found in the game. The larger the army of fighting bots, the more resources the player can store, as seen in the table below.

The game has announced that more classes will be introduced to the game regularly, including sub-classes.

Cards and Rarity

The different robot parts are represented as a card in the game. These cards are used in battles. Given that each player enters any battle with three robots, each of which has five parts, totals up to 15 cards. In battles, each card amount is doubled, which means that each player’s deck consists of 30 cards. These cards have the following parameters and look like the following:

• Class
• Rarity
• Battery cost
• Damage
• Armor
• Special ability (if the card is rare)

Picking the right cards is essential for winning battles, and as mentioned earlier, having a «pure» fighting bot will increase the abilities.

Rare cards offer higher damage, more armor, and a special ability. The rarities are as follows and listed from worst to best

• Common (Gray Border)
• Rare (Blue Border)
• Epic (Purple Border)
• Legendary (Golden Border)

New cards will be added to the game every season.

Building Fighting Robots

Building the perfect combination of fighter bots is perhaps the most exciting part of the game. This is where players will use the resources they’ve acquired through battles to build their perfect team of fighting bots. When a bot is built it’s minted on the blockchain and becomes an asset that the player holds.

The player will need the following resources to build a fighting bot, and only one bot can be built at any given time:

• 5 Different Parts – Head, Torso, Left And Right Arms, And Legs
• Spark
• Xoil
• RBLS coin

As players continue to build fighting bots throughout the season, the cost will rise. This cost will reset once a new season starts.

One crucial factor to consider is gathering the parts and spark needed to build bots. This is done through participating in the PvP battles. Gaining the Xoil resource can be done through PvP and adventure modes. In the PvP battles, each player will be able to earn a part that a robot on the losing opponents’ team has.

When building the fighting bots, the player can know what ability to expect as each part has a card attached to it. Other factors, such as rarity and special ability, are determined randomly after the building process is completed.

Gameplay

Rebel Bots’ core gameplay is turn-based and semi-automatic. Similar games that come to mind are games such as Hearthstone, Magic The Gathering, and Clash Royale.

Rebel Bots will have similar gameplay to the games referenced above, where there are two players, each on the different side and their cards with different abilities and stats. Their goal? Battle and destroy the opponent by playing the right cards at the right time to achieve the upper hand and to get ahead.

As mentioned previously, Rebel Bots wants to create an accessible game for all gamers, including the hardcore competitive players and the more casual players that perhaps haven’t played an NFT before. The game should be easy to learn, yet hard to master.

Another aspect of the gameplay is outside the battles themselves and revolves around players creating their perfect deck of cards to gain the upper hand in battles. This requires players to study and learn cards and abilities to be prepared for their next battle ahead.

Adventure Mode (PvE)

The single-player mode of Rebel Bots is the adventure mode. Here players can progress through the land of Xoilium and gain the valuable resource, Xoil. Players will take on missions and clear areas to earn rewards and resources that can later be used to build new robots and win battles.

In adventure mode, players are free to play as much as they’d like, with the only limitation being how much Xoil they can earn each day.

To harvest the maximum resources from missions, players have to complete the missions three times, each gaining them an increased amount of Xoil. The difficulty of the mission itself also determines the amount earned in each stage.

As players harvest Xoil in adventure mode, a portion will be given to the kingdom lord, and another portion will be added to the kingdom treasury.

There will be new missions at the start of every season, and players can revisit and continue playing to earn more Xoil.

Multiplayer Mode (PvP)

The multiplayer mode of Rebel Bots is the player vs. player mode (PvP). Here players can battle with their fighting bots against other players. This mode is also the primary way to earn Xoil, Spark, and collect parts to build new fighting bots.

The matchmaking is based on the player’s MMR (matchmaking rating), and players are matched against other players with similar MMRs. This means that players will meet other players at a similar skill or achievement level. The players will then lose or gain MMR based on the opponent’s MMR rating.

Playing in PvP matches consumes one energy point per battle compared to the adventure mode. In Rebel Bots, players can still play in PvP battles when their energy runs out. However, they won’t be able to gain any resources, meaning they’ll only play for the gameplay itself and their MMR rating.

The amount of Spark and Xoil gained from winning PvP battles is determined by the player’s MMR and league.

Leagues

As with many other competitive games, Rebel Bots also has implemented the use of leagues. All players start in the lower leagues and can work their way up to the higher leagues – which hold special prizes in Xoil and RBLS. The bottom league is the only league that doesn’t provide any rewards for players who win their matches. The leagues are structured as seen in the following table:

Gameplay Mechanics

The game’s basic mechanics is a semi-automatic card battle game. Players choose their cards to play, and the card performs its action when it’s their turn. This basic mechanic continues until one player is victorious.

The battles themselves take place in one of the player’s original habitats, and the only effect of the habitat, in terms of the battle, is the visuals shown.

Each player can play their Kingdom Card once in each match. This card is chosen by all players in their kingdom at the start of each season. This card works like any other card and can cause damage, increase armor and hit points of fighting bots or use a special ability.

The Flow Of The Battle

Each player will show their fighting bots at the beginning of each battle and place them on the playing field. The game then proceeds through its game phases:

• Preview Phase – Showing 10 cards of each player’s card deck while keeping 5 cards hidden.
• Rounds Phase – A time-limited phase in which each player can choose which cards or special abilities to play.
• Outcome Phase – End of the battle round and determination of winner with the prizes shown. The battle is completed when one of the players has no more robots left on the battlefield.

Currencies and Resources

The game has two cryptocurrencies and  two in-game currencies, as shown in the table below:

Leaderboards and Season Prizes

There will be three different leaderboards in Rebel Bots. This is to give different players the ability to compete on the leaderboards that are most suited to them, their playstyles, and what they enjoy in the game. To win prizes, players have to rank high on that respective leaderboard.

The leaderboards will reset at the start of every season and also announce the previous season’s winners. Prizes for the respective leaderboards are known in advance.

The different leaderboard types are as follows:

• Worldwide Player Leaderboard – A leaderboard that shows all the players ranked by their MMR. This leaderboard will reward the best of the best players.
• Kingdoms Leaderboard – A leaderboard that shows all the kingdoms ranked by the cumulative amount of their top 10 players’ MMR. This will let the top 10 players, in each respective kingdom, earn rewards.
• Internal Kingdom Leaderboard – A leaderboard that shows all the players in the respective kingdom, ranked by the number of battles they’ve won during the season. This leaderboard allows the top 3 players in each kingdom to earn rewards.

Tokenomics

In Rebel Bots, there is only one native token, RBLS. The cap for this token is a maximum of 300 Million RBLS, and players can earn this token for free by doing specific gameplay actions in the Rebel Bots game. It’s the in-game premium currency. 

The token may also be given out to players that the developers deem appropriate through the community events, grants, bonus tokens, competitions, and more. This token can be traded between players on exchanges.

Here is an RBLS token allocation diagram:

The team at Rebel Bots wants to make sure that the RBLS token is designed to incentivize long-term growth and sustainability. Below is an illustration of the anticipated schedule.

Token Allocation Per Group

There are ten different allocation groups. As seen in the table below, the supply is minted and allocated in milestones, based on a blocking schedule. This blocking schedule is made to ensure that there is a balance between the supply and demand of the RBLS token.

The investors that participated in the company’s seed investment round received an initial seed allocation.

The RBLS market cap at listing will be USD 600,000, and the number of tokens on the token generation event will be 6,000,000 RBLS, representing 2.00% of the total supply.

Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO)

The Rebel Bots game aims to turn into a complete community-owned DAO through the governance token, RBLS. They estimate that this process will be finished by Q4 2023.

As of today, Rebel Bots is a game that is community-driven where the developers work with the rebel bot owners and fans through different media. They hope to keep growing on social media platforms, such as Twitter, Discord, etc. This strategy has already proven to be effective in having a pool of players ready for launch, as well as marketing content, driving growth, and bringing in new players.

Rebel Bots’ website

---

💡 What is our impression of their website? What’s good/bad? How compatible is it with computers and phones – from a user perspective?

We compared Rebel Bots’ desktop version and mobile site to see how it measures up and if there were any changes that Rebel Bots could make to the site to improve it. Follow along to see our verdict. In this testing, we used a Samsung Galaxy S10+.

Screenshot borrowed from rebelbots.com desktop, menu.

Desktop

When entering the website on the desktop, we first saw a loading icon, and once it finished loading, we could see the call to action “Let’s Go.” Unfortunately, we were unable to scroll until the loading was complete. 

To our surprise, the entire background image moved along with the mouse, which was a fun little touch to the website – Making it a little more memorable. In the website’s menu, the creators had promoted its social media in the upper right corner, including Twitter, Telegram, and Discord. There were four main sections in the menu to discover – Xoilium planet, community, about, and token. 

When scrolling down or by clicking the “Let’s Go” button, we were introduced to a graphic-novel-like explanation of the game world and how it came to be. The user could either scroll down or click the next button to continue reading. For each scroll or slide, the user would be able to see detailed, colorful, and explanatory art that was consistent with the story. We believe that a visual learner would be pleased with this explanation of how the Rebel Bots’ world came to be.

After the graphic storytelling of the robots’ background, the user would be given even more information about what Xoil Wars (the game) is, how it works, an introduction to the game modes, the aspect of building a robot, NFT assets, whitepaper, roadmap, and investors. 

For the Building bots part of the website, the user is actually able to switch between different robotic parts to create different variations of robots, choosing between 5 parts; Head, left arm, right arm, body, and legs. This made for an entertaining scroll break.

Screenshot borrowed from rebelbots.com desktop, Building Bots. Screenshot demonstrating the features which can be changed on the robot.

The background moving along with the mouse was an effect that was also used in the “Limited Land Plots” part of the website. When the user is introduced to the different classes of bots, they will scroll down. However, the screen would move to the right to showcase the bots which weren’t visible before. Although the beginning and end of this effect were a little too quick, we did think it worked well for the website. The different goals of the roadmap would light up as the user hovered the computer mouse over the goal, making the goals much easier to read than the grayed-out versions. Several “call to action” were added to the website, giving the user a chance to sign up for their newspaper/notifications.

Screenshot borrowed from rebelbots.com desktop, Roadmap.

The investors’ slide had good-sized logos, which lit up as the user would hover their mouse over it and links to the Investors’ website connected to each logo. In the end, the user would have the option to be “beamed up” to the beginning of the website or a second chance to enter their Twitter, Discord, and OpenSea to have a look at their NFTs.

The Rebel Bots’ website is quite complex. However, we do think that they have created a really cool website. It’s fun to scroll through, detailed and unique. The artwork is filled with small details and references from the game, and it leaves the user well informed about how the game will look and what to expect. 

There is quite a lot of text with useful information which assists the user in understanding the game, but on the flip side, it doesn’t feel like a lot when scrolling through. There was a color theme of black, gray, turquoise, white, and yellow throughout the website, tying it all together. 

The layout is pleasing to the eye. As we tested the website, we were surprised by the fun ways of catching our attention through the effects, such as the moving background, scrolling down, making an unexpected turn, and the cinematic trailer. The added choices for the user to skip the cinematic trailer or be automatically moved to the first loading page saved time, as well as it made the site more enjoyable for 2nd and 3rd visits. 

We also noticed that there wasn’t an introduction of the game’s creators, which is usually showcased on the website, close to the advisors/sponsors. If we were to ask for something to be added to this website, it would be some background music to assist the cinematic feel or perhaps even a narrator to read the story to the visitor of the site.

All in all, there is not much complaining to do about the desktop version of this website. We enjoyed it for sure. But will the mobile version measure up? Let’s find out.

Mobile

Entering the website on mobile, we had our doubts if this version will be as enjoyable as the one prior. The menu has been scrunched, showing the logo and a menu symbol. When clicking on the menu, the user can visit every page and option that was available on the desktop version. The background didn’t move on the mobile site, but the loading screen stayed the same. When scrolling down, the user is introduced to the Cinematic-trailer and has the option to skip the trailer if desired. The layout of the artwork of the trailer showed itself nicely on the mobile screen. The text took up almost half of the screen because of the nature of the mobile layout.

On the other hand, the user could see the full artwork before the text appeared, making it so that the art wasn’t all lost. The Building bots part of the website, which we enjoyed on the desktop, also worked well on the mobile. The pictures added further down the website were of a nice size, and they were added nicely by considering the mobile layout. As anticipated, the effect where the background moved depending on the mouse was also removed on the Limited land plots part of the mobile site.

Screenshot borrowed from rebelbots.com mobile menu.

Screenshot borrowed from rebelbots.com mobile, building bots.

Whereas the Unlimited fighting bots part of the website surprised us on the desktop version, the creators of the mobile site also removed this effect and instead placed the robots as a picture underneath the text. However, the picture seemed a little cramped, and parts of the robots were missing on the mobile screen. 

The roadmap also had a different layout, making the user slide to see more, which was a nice adjustment to the mobile screen. For the investors’ part of the website, the size was well adjusted to the mobile screen, and there was still an effect when hovering over a logo. When clicking, the user would be relocated to the investors’ website which they had clicked. 

At the end of the mobile site, the same opportunities were given to the mobile site for the user to “beam me up” and click the Twitter, discord, and OpenSea.

The Verdict

To say that this is a good website would be an understatement. To scroll through this website is an experience, and while spending time, we got to explore the lore, game modes, the robots, and supporters of this project. We enjoyed the opportunity to try to customize a robot of our own by changing parts, giving a broader understanding of how items will be sold and traded through the game. 

The website using a desktop was exciting and kept surprising us, while the mobile site was thorough. The creators had very obviously heard and listened to the limitation of a mobile device, creating a mobile site perfect for the mobile screen. Even though some images were cropped, the background was almost as perfect as possible, considering the limitations. The effects left out of the mobile site were probably the best thing to limit the possible errors to zero.

The artwork was detailed, and the cinematic trailer was nicely balanced on both desktop and mobile devices. As mentioned, in the desktop version of the website, the only thing we would ask for would be a soundtrack to set the mood or even a narrator in the cinematic trailer. Even without these suggestions, the website was close to perfect. We enjoyed all the options to skip or scroll to the start, customizable robot options, detailed artwork, and user-friendliness. We feel like this website is deserving of Papi’s thumb-up reference from the Disney movie “Kronks’ new groove.”

Papi’s thumb-up reference from the Disney movie ‘’Kronks’ new groove’’.

Blockchain

---

What Chain Does The Game Run On?

Rebel Bots have chosen to build their token economy on the Polygon blockchain. They say the reasons for selecting the Polygon blockchain comes back to accommodate the business and community aspects as much as the technology. In addition, Polygon fits all of the game’s requirements for a blockchain which are:

• Decentralized And Secure: The blockchain network should be decentralized and secure enough to cancel the risk of being compromised. The infrastructure should be immune to 51%-attacks and other vulnerabilities.
• EVM Blockchain Compatibility: It should support ERC-20 and ERC-721 token standards to comply with solidity, cross-chain bridges, and open source for mobility.
• Popularity: Polygon is one of the more popular blockchains for gaming projects.

Polygon

Polygon is a layer-2 solution to the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum is the second-largest blockchain globally and the number one blockchain development platform of choice. However, it has its limitations regarding throughput, poor user experience, and no sovereignty. For a consumer, this means high gas fees, delayed Proof of Work (PoW) finality, and shared throughput on the blockchain, which could risk clogging.

The limitations of Ethereum have led to several projects exploring alternatives compatible with the Ethereum main chain. By doing this, they can still take advantage of Ethereum’s ecosystem and leverage more throughput and lower gas fees on a scaling layer-2 solution.

Before Polygon came to be, there was no specialized framework to build such blockchains or protocols to connect them. Polygon sets out to be a protocol and framework for building and connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks. It takes the best of Ethereum and other sovereign blockchains into an attractive feature set. 

Such features are listed below:

• Ethereum Compatibility: Industry dominance, established tech stack, tools, languages, standards, enterprise adoption.
• Scalability: Dedicated blockchains, scalable consensus algorithms, custom WebAssembly execution environments.
• Security: Modular “security as a service,” provided either by Ethereum or by a pool of professional validators.
• Sovereignty: Dedicated throughput and resources, fully customizable tech stack, and sovereign governance.
• Interoperability: Native support for arbitrary message passing and bridges to external systems.
• User Experience: Comparable to “Web2”, “zero-gas” transactions, and instant transaction finality.
• Developer Experience: Equivalent to Ethereum, no protocol level knowledge required, no token deposits, fees, or permissions.
• Modularity: High customizability, extensibility, upgradeability, short time-to-market, community collaboration.

In short, Polygon is a decentralized Ethereum-scaling platform that enables developers to build scalable, user-friendly dApps with low transaction costs and without ever sacrificing security.

Over 7’000 dApps have taken advantage of Polygon’s scaling solution, and they are committed to fostering the growth of Web3 applications by providing the infrastructure needed for Web3.

Our Thoughts On The Chain?

Polygon seems to have become the go-to layer-2 solution for Ethereum. We’ve seen it be used in several P2E games and believe it is so popular because of the average transaction time of just 2.3 seconds and overall network throughput of 10’000 TPS (Transactions Per Second). This performance is currently unbeaten on Ethereum compatible solutions. Comparatively, Ethereum takes about 15 seconds to do the same type of transaction, consumes significantly more power, and has an overall higher cost for the transaction.

Another point in favor of Polygon is that the Ethereum ecosystem is a safe place to build because of its enormous ecosystem and widespread adoption. Of course, it is not necessarily risky to build out P2E games on other blockchains like Avalanche or Tezos, but going for an Ethereum-based solution could be a way of “playing it safe.”

Having said all this, building on Polygon is not without risk. On March 11, 2022, Polygon suffered from an extended service outage after an upgrade. The network was down for over 11 hours which caused a lot of ripples in the crypto world, as the network couldn’t produce new blocks, costing the community and consumers a lot of money.

Some critics also claim that Polygon is still highly insecure and centralized. For example, in a Twitter post from Justin Bons, founder and CIO of Cyber Capital, he claims that it would only take five people to compromise over $4Billion. Four of these individuals are the founders of Polygon. His arguments are:

• The Polygon smart contract admin key is controlled by a 5 out of 8 multi-signature contract. Meaning Polygon can gain complete control over the network with only one of the four outside parties conspiring. The Polygon team selected the other four parties in the multi-sig. This means that the four other participants are not impartial. Control of the contract admin key is the same as having the power to change the rules. At this point, anything is possible (including emptying the entire Polygon contract currently worth over $4B).
• Regarding Polygon’s operational security and cryptographic ritual surrounding the creation of the multi-sig, he says that Polygon has not been transparent. The reason transparency is important is to establish trust in the multi-sig.
• On May 20, 2020, the Polygon team refused to respond to a formal request for disclosure regarding the multi-sig, which Bons considers a giant red flag. As a result, transparency was and is severely lacking.
• On May 15, 2021, Polygon did release a “transparency report,” which Bons claims is just a defense of the status quo, only further justifying the use of the multi-sig. The report did not cover any aspects of operational security. Neither did it address the need to mitigate the contract to reduce the admin key risk.
• On January 19, 2022, Polygon released its “state of governance: decentralization.” Unfortunately, this doesn’t discuss the multi-sig, but it lays the groundwork for Polygon DAO.
• Bons says that he respects the Polygon team and even with their best intentions, quoting the Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic: “An exit scam is not a realistic concern for Polygon.” Bons says Bjelic can trust himself, but other people can’t know what is in another’s mind. “Don’t trust, Verify!”
• With over $4B locked on the chain, it is a hack waiting to happen, and organized crime could target these individuals holding parts of the multi-sig. The four founders themselves meeting in person could lead to an accidental loss. His point is that a 5 out of 8 multi-sig is insufficient for $4B.
• He provides a clear alternative where Polygon has to decentralize its governance based on the $MATIC token holders. And once governance is decentralized, the team would have to hand the power of the smart contract admin key over to the token holders. effectively turning control over to a “Polygon DAO.” This operation would probably be both difficult and expensive to do, but it is the price to pay for not doing it right, to begin with. It is the price for decentralization and the security that comes with it. Pretending to be secure and decentralized is not good enough.
• He ends off by saying that Polygon has an opportunity to lead by example, and an acknowledgment of the problem and a commitment to fix it would go a long way.

Read the whole Twitter post to get all the details. Justin Bons has been in the crypto-space since 2014 and is running a successful investing fund. He is known for his lengthy Twitter threads critiquing popular blockchains where he sees issues.

Pros and cons aside, we, in the Balthazar Alpha Team, aim to provide as good information as possible to let readers decide for themselves. Polygon is likely one of the better blockchains Rebel Bots could have chosen, but nothing is risk-free.

Team

---

The Rebel Bots team has two main offices, one in Israel and one in Kyiv. The founders and core team come from careers in the game development industry and have partaken in highly successful mobile games. They believe that NFTs are the future of gaming, hence, Rebel Bots.

Across the members, they have decades of experience in designing, developing, and delivering social games for companies such as Gameloft, Playtika, Tencent, and Youda Games. Distributed across the two offices, the Rebel Bot team has over 25 people in full capacity to develop the game.

Some of the previous game titles the team has been involved with:

• Slotomania
• Governor of Poker 3
• Backgammon Live
• Iron Blade
• Modern Combat

The different professions within the team comprise:

• Developers
• Product Designers
• Art Designers
• Animators
• Blockchain Developers
• Game Economy Experts

Team Assessment

Usually, we, in the Alpha Team, can dig up information on individual team members from publicly available sources. However, we haven’t found any details regarding team members with Rebel Bots, except what they generally share in their whitepaper regarding the team’s overall experience and background. Therefore, we can’t do an honest assessment of the team.

We know that according to themselves, they got the relevant experience to pull off a project like this and that they’ve previously participated in the development of a handful of mobile games mentioned earlier.

Where we can’t verify ourselves, key investors like Ubisoft and Overwolf must have done their due diligence to invest and partner with the project. It looks legit with giants in the industry on the investor side, but we would like to know more about the people themself.

Who Are Their Backers?

Roadmap

---

Game Developers Roadmap

Alpha Teams Thoughts On The Roadmap

From the roadmap, we can see that the Game Launch is the next step for the Rebel Bots universe, with a release in June 2022. The only other point on their roadmap is the creation of the Rebel Bots DAO, scheduled for December. We’d love to have some more goals and aims within the roadmap so we’d have more of an idea of what Rebel Bots is planning between June and December, but, at the same time, appreciate the simplicity and no-promise approach they’ve chosen with their roadmap.

Guild Facilitation

---

Delegation: Yes

Rebel Bots has a built-in scholarship mechanism in their marketplace allowing easy creation of management of scholarships, and throughout the whitepaper we can see that they have put a lot of thought into being a guild-inclusive game and making life easy for scholarship creation.

Whitepaper

---

Link to the whitepaper: https://cdn.rebelbots.com/Whitepaper_English.pdf

Alpha Team General Thoughts On The Whitepaper

Rebel Bots whitepaper is one of the better whitepapers we’ve seen. It’s detailed, answers most of the questions we’ve had, and looks beautiful. The whitepaper is 40 pages, is structured well, easy to read, and has clear and concise titles, making navigating it an efficient read.

It contains an executive summary, which tells us, in a straight-to-the-point manner, what the Rebel Bots universe is, what their vision of the project and their strategy to achieve it. They then go on to make a note of the key aspects to achieving success. After that, the whitepaper has some backstory and lore, information about their NFTs, how the gameplay works, a little about their team and investors, their token and their plans to become a completely autonomous organization, and some about the Rebel Bots collection.

Most of these parts are filled out well, worded in an easy-to-read manner, and structured in a way that makes the reading order logical and you often get answers to your questions just by reading the next line.

One section we’d like to nitpick a bit on is the page regarding their team. As mentioned in our section about their team, it was hard to find information about the developers, and the whitepaper claims that the team is composed of veterans with over 10 years each in the social gaming industry. These claims are not verifiable and thus, we find this section to be lackluster and frankly, not very useful. We’d like to see more information about their team with information that can build up their claims.

Socialnomics

---

Social Media Followers Count

Platform	Follower Count
Discord	16,830
Twitter	57,662
Telegram	20,480

Rebel Bots has a decent following on Twitter, and a nice base on Telegram and Discord as well. In their discord server, they have their own announcement chat where you can find news about the game, purchases, guild registrations and live QA’s for their audience. In addition, there seems to be an unwritten rule, that if there aren’t updates in a week or two on Discord, the creators are busy building and creating the game-to-be. 

The Discord also has its own server where official safe links are available and another server for game updates where a lot of pictures are shared with the members. Judging by the reactions in these chats, the members are seemingly hyped about the game. The community appears to be social and talkative while keeping the chat Rebel-Bot themed. However, we do notice that the chat seems to continue thanks to the same few profiles being extra talkative.

On Twitter, the creators seem to post updates or announcements 1-3 times a day. The announcements could be regarding partnerships, in-game environments, scholars and guilds, giveaways, and occasionally retweets from their supporters. Much like other games we’ve researched so far, the game does have its own ‘’Twitter server’’ on Discord where tweets are retweeted to its following. Their Twitter posts seem to achieve between 150-600 likes and often more retweets for every post on Twitter itself, but judging from Discord it’s between 8-40 reactions.

Based on what could be expected from the number of followers on Twitter, we do believe that Rebel Bots has a relatively good community that engages and contributes by retweeting, liking, and commenting. The engagement rate, which is based on these factors, is between 0.25%-1.25% which is quite good. To recap, the Discord following also seems to enjoy theme-appropriate chats, which gives the community an even stronger appearance.

Conclusion

---

The Rebel Bots game is the first game in Xoiliums Rebel Bots universe. The game has a great vision and aims to be an easy game to pick up, while also being challenging and fun to play. It’ll be interesting to see how the game plays out when it releases, and with a lot of people already lined up for launch, the game is almost guaranteed not to be empty without a player base. Launching on PC and mobile, this game has the potential to reach the masses in mobile gaming. It’s going to be critical that they achieve a good balance between fun gameplay, interesting game, and NFT mechanics, and a healthy economy, especially when we compare them to some of their competitors.

The team still remains a mystery, and we would’ve liked to see more information about them. However, with big investors, such as Ubisoft, backing the project and the team behind them, this eases our worries in this regard to some extent.

All in all, based on the currently available information we could find and process we are unable to give Rebel Bots our vote of confidence unless they manage to achieve sustainable earnings for players. No game has figured out a proper and sustainable play to earn economy, and although Rebel Bots mention sustainably throughout their whitepaper, they are very vague about explaining how they want to achieve it. In addition, there are many strong competitors in the card gaming space and we don’t clearly see the appeal or edge that Rebel Bots can offer.

Regardless, going forward we’re excited to see this universe unfold and with more games down the pipeline, we’re excited to see how the Rebel Bots Xoil Wars game will be doing at launch. We cross our fingers that this won’t just be another NFT card battling game.

Other Research Reports

Balthazar Research Report: Past the Singularity: Delysium

Apr 20th, 2023 Brad

Delysium has ambitions with its “Multiverse.” In short, it’s an open-world MMO with user-generated content in the metaverse with a Cyberpunk’y feel. In this multiverse, players will play side-by-side with AI Virtual Beings. These AIs won’t only be NPCs but could be companions and independent entities with which players can hang out. More about the AIs later. However, the novelty of Delysium isn’t just semi-sentient AI players but decentralized game publishing.  The Delysium core team is building a game publishing platform allowing so-called “Delysium Metaverse Operators (DMOs)” to make their own game universes within the Delysium Multiverse. Ready Player One, anyone?

Read More

Read More

Balthazar Research Report: Bear with us: Bullieverse

Mar 9th, 2023 Brad

Bullieverse is an Open Metaverse developed for the community of players and creators. It is built for Web 3.0 citizens to have an immersive environment. As a result, gamers enjoy an out-of-the-world experience combined with a transparent and fair monetization mechanism that underpins our open player-owned economy. The result is a high-quality gaming platform where users can both play and earn, but more importantly, experience it.

Read More

Read More

Balthazar Research Report: Citizen Conflict – Which District is Yours?

Feb 2nd, 2023 Brad

Citizen Conflict is a team-based shooter game with various game modes set in a dystopian world called Ether Islands. It is free-to-play and built with Unreal Engine 5.

Read More

Read More

Register Now!

Register for Token Sale

Balthazar is launching it’s token to the public very soon! Join our waitlist for exclusive benefits and instructions on how to participate!

Register Now!

Connect with our community.

• Discord
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Medium
• TikTok