The Hunt
View the case- Brand
- Yuga Labs
- Year
- 2023
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Tech & Telecom
- Mechanic
- Adventure & Quest
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Makemepulse
Objective
Yuga Labs was building out the Bored Ape Yacht Club universe through web3 gaming and needed to keep the momentum going after Dookey Dash and HV-MTL Forge. The Hunt gave the 30,000 holders of the HV-MTL mech NFTs a reason to log in every day: a way to level their mechs up toward the next evolution tiers and compete for $APE prizes in a final showdown.
Solution
Starting from the mech base players had already built up in Forge, they open a portal and send their mech down into the Rift. They pick a biome, a difficulty, and a build for their mech, then move through a randomly generated dungeon room by room, grabbing resources, fighting through turn-based battles, and unlocking chests with keys they find along the way. A run ends when the exit is found or the mech's battery — its health bar — runs out. Whatever got collected goes back to base to craft augments, which slot into the mech's six gear slots and change how it performs on the next run. The final Rift Boss season added a forbidden zone, a boss fight, and a shared leaderboard for the top runs.
- 1
Players open the browser game and connect a wallet; the full experience requires owning an NFT from the HV-MTL collection (30,000 mechs), which can be delegated to a second wallet but played from only one wallet at a time.
- 2
At their home base, the Forge, players tend to their mech — petting it, putting it to sleep, opening portals, cleaning up after it — and spend daily energy building tiles and decor from a set of 100 blueprints; placed tiles can be rotated but not moved, only destroyed. The community votes on other players' bases, and each vote earns the mech "amps," which trigger visual evolution stages up to a maximum of six. Expanding the base toward the surrounding fog of war eventually reveals a portal to the Rift, unlocking the dungeon once the base and its amps have progressed far enough.
- 3
On first entering the Rift, players choose a specialization and equip a matching core: Fighter recovers battery from each kill, Crafter has a higher minimum craft level and gathers more resources, and Explorer spends half as much energy on movement and lasts longer underground.
- 4
Before each run, players pick one of the available biomes — Canyon, Citadel, Aero or Mainframe — and set a difficulty level that determines how much energy the run will cost.
- 5
The core loop is a procedurally generated dungeon crawl rendered in WebGL: the mech's battery doubles as its health and drains with distance traveled (more slowly for Explorer), while players gather loot along the way — common crates, rare treasure chests that need a key, and drops from defeated enemies, with Crafter yielding extra materials. Encounters trigger turn-based combat against enemies with distinct attack patterns, where a shield must be broken before direct damage lands.
- 6
The goal of a run is to reach the exit portal before the battery runs out, which lets the mech leave with everything collected; if the battery dies, including mid-fight, the mech is ejected back to base and keeps only half its loot at random. Entering the Rift at least once a day grants a daily "expansion pack" reward.
- 7
Back at base, players craft by choosing a recipe, a mold, and three ingredients, with the interface showing success and rarity odds before confirming; finished items can be upgraded with gems to raise their rarity or broken down for a chance to recover the mold, and separate keys must be crafted to open chests found in the Rift.
- 8
Players equip crafted augments into six slots on the mech to balance its stats for future runs, and can craft a new specialization core from found materials to switch specializations; reaching community-wide milestones unlocks a fifth biome, Shimmer.
- 9
In the game's final season, players enter the Rift in a "Rift Boss" mode, searching a forbidden zone for a boss arena and fighting the boss; wins earn shards, with fewer turns yielding more shards, and shard totals set players' place on a leaderboard that pays out $APE and mech upgrades.
