Dev Blog Ep. 05: Boba Guys Collaboration
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By Tore Blystad, Creative Director
This week has been really busy! We released our first proper early gameplay showcase and announced the closing of a $7.5M Strategic Round of financing! With so much action, you might have missed another exciting thing that happened this week for Nyan Heroes — a fresh, new collaboration!
Web3 developers are always up for collabs because they’re great for creativity and fun for our communities. I’ve done many collabs in my gaming career, but this is the first time I’ve worked on a game dev / boba bubble tea collaboration!
Boba Guys is the biggest North American boba chain. When the opportunity to get our artwork in their stores came up, we couldn’t pass it up! We delivered artwork prints for their cups, sleeves and even stickers which get handed out at their stores during the week of May.
In traditional AAA game development, a deal like this can take a very long time to negotiate because of the tons of stakeholders and legalities that add layers of complexity to collaboration deals. These decisions typically need to be vetted across many departments and planned for strategically throughout the organization. In my experience, this process can easily take 6 months. But for us, from when we first started until we submitted the art for the final print, we spent only 6 days!
By random luck, I was passing by our local Boba Guys shop when I got the call about the collaboration, so I popped in and got some template cups and sleeves. Over the next couple of days we had visual jam sessions between artists in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Berlin and Portugal, coming up with the slogan and key art. We almost missed the deadline because on the night the delivery was due, our Portuguese team member went to sleep (in fairness, it was the middle of the night there) and we were having trouble accessing the Google Drive folder where the artwork was stored and shared with the BobaGuys team. 😂In the end, it all worked out and the final merch came out amazing!
It was a really fun project, but more importantly a great ‘fire drill’ for our team since we want to be really flexible, nimble, and able to handle collaborative opportunities as they appear. How do we deal with this in the future? How can we be better equipped as a studio? Well, we’re now hiring a graphic designer that works with print. 😸
The swag went live this week at Boba Guys, I went to get a cup for myself but they were already sold out, so the sweet staff made me a custom cup to make up for it. Don’t make the same mistake as me. Visit your nearest Boba Guys store before they’re all gone! 🙏😸
About Nyan Heroes
Nyan Heroes is a free-to-play hero shooter that combines fast-paced, competitive gameplay with a real-world impact. Developed by a remote team of seasoned game developers and powered by Unreal Engine 5 and blockchain technology, Nyan Heroes pays homage to cats and offers a AAA multiplayer experience with epic mech character classes, thrilling cat-like movements, and unique gameplay abilities.
Learn More: nyanheroes.com
