The brief
Zerpmon is an NFT monster-battle game on the XRP Ledger. Two summoned creatures face off in an arena, each player's loadout docked at the edges, a live mission ticker running overhead. It's the screen players judge the game on first — and the one that decides whether a new player understands what's happening before they bounce.
The problem
A battle screen has to carry a lot at once: who's fighting, what's equipped, whose turn it is, what to do next — without burying the action under stats. For a Web3 title there's a second tax: wallet connection and NFT ownership have to feel like part of the game, not a banking detour.
The risk is the classic Web3 drop-off — players churn in minute one, lost between the wallet and the rules.
The approach
We started with the question every screen has to answer in the first second: what am I looking at, and what do I do next? Then we built outward — a clear visual hierarchy for the active monster and turn state, a docked loadout that reads as "yours vs theirs," and an onboarding path that introduces the wallet only when the player needs it, framed in game language.
Battle, collection and onboarding were designed as one consistent system, so a player who learns the arena already understands the rest of the game.
The outcome
The result is a battle screen that does the heavy lifting of onboarding while it entertains — the part of Zerpmon players see, touch, and judge. Layer 7, done properly.