Official art for Neon District's First Playable Alpha Game Mechanic, Neon Pizza. [Source]

Join me in Neon District!

January 19th was a very exciting day for me. It was the day that, after months of me watching and waiting and getting super excited, Neon District--a cyberpunk rpg/card-based game hybrid in which all characters and gear are player-owned NFTs--finally released its first play-to-earn open alpha mission: Neon Pizza.

The studio behind Neon District, Blockade Games, has written up an excellent How To Play guide for the Neon Pizza event, so I won't attempt to rehash that here, though I definitely suggest giving it a read--it will walk you through setting up your account, and parts of this write-up will assume you know about the basic features of the event. Instead, I want to share my experience/thoughts/takeaways from playing pretty seriously over the last three days.

Is it actually free to play/play to earn?
Amazingly, yes. Like everyone else on the planet, this has been a rough year for me financially, and I just don't have spare money to put into buying decent armor/boosts/in-game currency. Even though I'm playing with a really basic team right now (Neon District gives you your first four characters free, which is enough to build a complete team), I earned enough in-game currency (NEON) to buy myself a crate of gear in my second day of playing, and the drop rates for rarity/utility are honestly pretty decent.

In my first loot crate, I received 1 common, 2 uncommon, and 1 ultra-rare pieces of equipment, which, again, I paid no IRL money for. I'm currently about 3/4 of the way to affording my second loot crate now, and I'm really excited to see what I get!

The contents of my first gear crate.

It's worth noting that early financial backers of the game hold a special item called a Founder's Key (also referred to as a Root Key), which increases the drop rate of valuable loot. You can purchase a founder's key if this is something that appeals to you. The improved drop rate varies based upon key rarity. This rewards early backers for their support and, in my opinion, is totally fair. You can still do well in the game as it exists now even without this advantage.

Can you earn NEON even with a crappy team?
Yes, you can. As of writing this, I have a fairly weak team (all level 1 and 2 characters, minimal gear, and no weapons), but I'm in the top ten players worldwide, a status that is based largely on total NEON earned.

My team. There are six unique classes in Neon District. My character Signal is a Hacker, Checkmate is a Heavy, Pine Drive is a Doc, and Omen is a Demon. As you can see, they're all super weak.

And here is my ranking in the global leaderboard.

I'm the 9th ranked player out of nearly 700. Even though my ambush defense rate is absolutely appalling (1/65) and I get half on my NEON stolen every time I deliver a damn pizza, I still have been able to earn enough NEON overall to rank highly on the scoreboard because the main thing that earns you NEON is time played and paying attention to your timer (more on this in a second). Also note that the leaderboard is only for this week. Even if you start late in the week and don't rank highly on the board, you can still earn a ton of NEON, suit yourself up from the gear crates and get an early start next week to up your ranking.

Also, it's important to note that NEON can buy you more than just gear. You can also use it to purchase Juice, which allows you to level up your characters. The stronger your characters, the better you'll be able to defend against other teams ambushing you (and I look forward to this, because I'll make NEON twice as fast when I'm not hemorrhaging it to fully-kitted-out teams). Basically, though, Neon District rewards you for time invested, not just money invested, and they have clearly put a lot of thought and effort into their game being a great experience for both non-paying and paying players, and I would say they've succeeded pretty well so far. For more on Blockade Games' approach to balancing the game, as well as some in-depth game mechanics, check out this article.

So I have to have to play constantly to do well? I actually have a life, I can't do that.
You don't have to be constantly plugged into the game to do well, but you should definitely pay attention to timing. Your team doesn't need your help while they deliver pizzas or deal with ambushes, and each delivery takes long enough (between 20 minutes and 80 minutes, based on my experience) that you can easily just leave a tab open on your computer while they do their thing and the clock counts down the time on their delivery.
However, if you're easily distracted (guilty), or if you think you might, I don't know, accidentally fall asleep or something (also guilty), SET A TIMER for just under the amount of time your delivery will last so that you can claim your pay IMMEDIATELY when it's received. If you don't and you're too weak to defend against other players ambushing you, you're almost certain to have all your unbanked pay stolen along with half of your next delivery's tips. I've learned this the hard way--I was ranked number five globally yesterday, and then I took a nap and lost all of my neon because I didn't bank it. WHOOPS.

This is what it looks like when you don't pay attention--not pretty.

Is it Buggy?
Actually, no, not very, at least not for me. It's spent some time in a private alpha, and that seems to have ironed out a lot of the wrinkles. If you do run into a bug, hop on the Neon District Discord and let them know--they seem to fix stuff pretty fast. Actually, if you're interested in the game at all, you should join the Discord anyway--the dev team hangs out on there all day, and they're all extremely responsive; they clearly love this game and want it to be the best it can be. The amount of accessibility to the team building the game is something I've not experienced before. Every time I've had a question about gameplay, future features, or mechanics, one of the devs has answered it super fast and with a wealth of detail. It's really wonderful.

Last Few Takeaways

• I haven't mentioned it yet, but OH MY GOD, the art. The art is just beautiful. The image at the top of this article is representative of the quality found throughout the game, and this makes sense, since the team has spent three years developing the game before this first small public alpha. If any of you guys have followed my own art for any amount of time, you'll know I'm a cyberwave/cyberpunk/sci-fi fan. In my opinion, Neon District's art (and the battle music) captures the neon-drenched, gritty, dystopia-noir vibe perfectly.

• Remember, this is an extremely early public alpha, and by playing, you're helping to test the game out, and you're also getting rewarded with season O loot, which won't be around forever. There's a ton more content that's due to be rolling out this year in the leadup to the release of Season 1 in Quarter 2, and it will be playable on all modern browsers (including smartphones). It's not just going to be all pizza fights forever. There's already an area where you can practice fighting with your team against either an AI or a friend so you can learn how your gear, character abilities and moveset cards work with no risk to your assets or ranking. I recommend getting familiar with the battle mechanics now, because these will clearly be important later in the game.

• I'm not affiliated with Blockade Games or Neon District in any way, nor am I being compensated at all for writing this. I'm just a nerd who loves cyberpunk, gaming, and crypto, and I think this game has enormous potential. If you want to check it out, you can join using my referral link or from the main website!

Useful links for more information

Official Articles

• Neon District: How To Play Guide
• Neon Pizza: How to Play Guide
• Neon District PVP: How to Play Guide
• Neon District: The Road to Season One
• The Neon District Token Model

Social Links

• Neon District Twitter
• Neon District Discord
• Blockade Games on Medium

One last thing!
If you like both cyberpunk and pizza, you should read Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson--it's an amazing book, it has pizza in it, and it was the inspiration for Second Life (a dubious honor; the book's virtual reality is much cooler than Second Life). It's just a really good book, and there's pizza delivering in it! And cyberpunk! And...the Italian Mafia?

Join me in Neon District!