Ah, the good old days in 1998 where my biggest worry was whether there was enough charge left in my Gameboy when I faced down the Elite 4. I remember being ecstatic when I played Pokemon Yellow for the first time, getting Pikachu as my starter and realizing how horribly unprepared I was for Brock’s gym (hint: get a Caterpie and evolve it to a Butterfree. Psychic makes quick work of Geodude and Onyx)

I’ll admit it — I’m a bit of a geek. But how couldn’t I be? Pokemon kept an entire generation of kids spellbound, with the hit TV show, a trading card game and countless games that I spent more hours playing than I care to admit. So imagine my excitement when I discovered Kryptomon, a blockchain based game on the BSC that sounds like it’ll be a definite hit if they manage to deliver on everything they envision. 

So what DO they plan on delivering? The game hasn’t been released yet so there isn’t too much information out there. The devs are slowly trickling out snippets of information via the website, telegram group and their discord. Lucky for you, I’ve already done all the research so you don’t have to. 

Let’s get cracking.

Genetics

Kryptomons will be governed by a combination of 38 different genes. These genes are randomly attributed when a Kryptomon is born and will determine it’s initial stats. Unlike Pokemon however, these stats don’t just determine your Kryptomon’s battle strength, but also it’s social requirements. Everything from how often you’ll need to feed it to how likely it’ll heed your commands in the heat of battle is quantified in this table of genes. 

The developers have also teased that every Kryptomon born will have a 1 in a 1000 chance to be a “wunderkind” Kryptomon. Details on this are sparse, but the whitepaper confirms that these wunderkinds will be special both visually and in it’s battle stats. 

Will it have better growth rates? A bigger boost to stats when levelling up? Imagine the excitement on discovering that you have the only Kryptomon ever that’s capable of breaking past the max level cap of 99 to reach level 100! 

Since the developers were inspired by Pokemon, is there also a possibility for legendary Kryptomons to appear? Since we already know genes make up a Kryptomon, what gene is responsible for making a Kryptomon “legendary” and will there be additional requirements in order to obtain one?

Breeding

Breeding will also play an integral part in the Kryptomon universe. After the first 10,000 eggs are created to kickstart the game, existing players will have to breed their Kryptomons to generate new eggs, which can be sold and traded on the marketplace. 

Not much else is known about breeding at the moment , though several important questions pop to mind, namely — 

1. How it will be done and the cost to breeders to create new eggs.
2. Time taken once the breeding process has kicked off for an egg to be laid and hatched into a new Kryptomon
3. Will the genetic crossover from Kryptomon to egg be something breeders can somewhat control? Or is it completely luck based?
4. If every player at the start is only airdropped one Kryptomon, how will breeding work with just one Kryptomon?

What IS clear is the fact that in order to assemble the strongest team and be the very best like no one ever was (ha! Pokemon pun), breeding is unavoidable. This creates a market for a new type of player — breeders that focus on breeding the best Kryptomon to sell at a profit instead of being confined to a purely battle focused game. 

A System Of Care

The care system that formed the basis of Tamagotchi’s success is a well known one. From the whitepaper, we know that the developers were inspired by Tamagotchi and plan to incorporate a similar concept of caring for your Kryptomons to strengthen them. 

For your Kryptomons to be your trusty sidekick in battle, you’ll have to feed it when it’s hungry and cuddle it when it needs attention. Do so and it’ll grow into a strong warrior ready for battle. Fail and it’ll… die. Forever. 

Fail to care for your Kryptomon and they’ll die… forever

Personally I’m excited about what this could mean for the Kryptomon universe. The care system fosters a bond between a Kryptomon and it’s trainer, forcing you to really focus on a core team as it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to afford raising too many Kryptomons at a time. This has the added benefit of preventing a scenario where a rich whale just buys up all strong Kryptomons on the market and continuously dominates the battle scene — He could do so for a short while, but he’d be losing money taking care of the upkeep of all his Kryptomons.

Of course, the above are just my personal guesses on the matter and we’ll have to wait for more official information to be released to know more.

KMON

The lifeblood of the Kryptomon universe, KMON will be the currency that underpins every transaction trainers take while playing the game. Understanding that trainers will be interested in the concept of #PlayToEarn, the devs have created the possibility for an interesting economy with various use cases for KMON. 

As one might expect, you’ll be able to use KMON to purchase Kryptomons from other trainers, powerups and items to strengthen our team, new unhatched eggs etc. What’s doubly interesting however, is the fact that trainers will also be able to stake KMON to earn additional KMON. This is a feature I’ve not seen in other games so far, and will become a source of secondary income for many trainers. However, as with any other project, controlling the circulating supply of KMON will be important in order to maintain a certain price floor. Only time will tell if the current burning mechanism (item/powerup transactions/breeding) will be able to accomplish this. 

Finally, the whitepaper also mentions the ability to bet KMON. Once the battle system is released, it seems that trainers will have the ability to place down wagers when battling, reminiscent of the Pokemon days where you’d receive some money after winning a battle against another trainer. Another wonderful idea in my opinion, since battles now have consequences and this will once again force trainers to put in more thought into their team . This will help grow the community as people try out new strategies, observe the current meta and keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

Ending Thoughts

That’s where we are at the moment. Being a game that hasn’t been launched just yet, there are still more questions than answers, and the devs have reiterated multiple times that they don’t know all the answers themselves! Instead, they intend for Kryptomon to develop by taking cues and suggestions from the community. 

Only time will tell if Kryptomon will be the next NFT phenomenon, but based on what we know so far, I’m cautiously hopeful. At the very least, you can be sure that I’ll be eagerly awaiting my egg next month, officially making me a Kryptomon trainer. 

If you haven’t already, check out my previous article on how you can sign up for Kryptomon. They release in June 2021 so there’s still time to snag yourself an egg!

See you soon in game, fellow Kryptomon trainer.