Trailer Breakdown: Clementine's Nightmare, A True AAA Web3 Auto-Battler

Exploring the Unique Blend of MOBA, CCG, and Blockchain in Clementine’s Nightmare

Combine an auto-battler with a CCG, MOBA elements and a healthy dose of blockchain, and you’ve got one of the most hotly-anticipated games of 2023!

Amongst all the doubt and setbacks of the last week, it’s time to look forward – and to some seriously impressive Web3 games dropping in 2023.

One of the most anticipated original titles in the works is Clementine’s Nightmare, a title combining “the action of auto-battlers, the strategy of CCGs, and the customization and depth of RPGs”, according to their whitepaper.

Five days ago, they dropped their first snippets of in-game footage via their Twitter. Ahead of a game demo walk-through in their Discord this Tuesday at 4 UTC, and an anticipated Q2 2023 Alpha release, let’s theorycraft on what we can establish thus far.

The video opens up to what looks like a summoning animation, perhaps the start of a 3v3 matchup – and if you were in any doubt that they could replicate the Coraline-esque cartoon-meets-macabre art style of their NFTs in-game, here’s where those doubts subside.

From there, we cut to the first taste of UI – a simple-but-effective minimalist overlay, with clear MOBA influences. All characters have a floating number (level, perhaps?), experience(?) bar and health bar; blue for allies, red for enemies, and green for the player-character.

At the top of the screen, we see what could be an ability tracker of sorts, whilst at the bottom of the screen, we see experience(?), health, skills and 4 card-based abilities – on some form of cooldown – for the player. The briefly-shown hover text for the “Heat Slash” card reads:

“Dash to each enemy, striking them for 500% Attack Damage and Igniting them.”

This makes clear reference to base stats of some kind, plus status effects that any auto-battler or MOBA fan would recognise.

We follow this in-game footage with a close-up of what appears to be a special ability – unsure if this is an in-game or out-of-game cinematic – followed by some cinematic combat close-ups.

Following more close-ups and in-game UI footage, we get a look at a variety of playable characters in a pre-game selection menu/character select screen – Vespyre (a tank?), Morde (a ranged DPS?) and Clementine herself (ranged DPS) – each with their own chunk of lore, helping to flesh out the Clemetine’s Nightmare universe.

These lore snippets make reference to the Light and the Nightmares – could these be the two main factions, akin to the Alliance and Horde in World of Warcraft, or Zaun and Piltover in League of Legends?

Moving on, we get a brief clip of the “Wild Burst” card being dragged onto the player-character, cutting just short of the card being “played”. This card has the text;

“Ravenous 2. Increase your Attack Speed by 100% for the next 3 seconds.”

I assume “Ravenous” is a stat of some kind, perhaps akin to Haste. Comparing “Wild Burst” to “Heat Slash” from earlier, it would appear these playable cards can be either abilities or temporary effects, such as player/ally buffs or enemy debuffs.

Next, we see what looks like a deck editor. It appears that each deck is formed of 10 cards, with a range of abilities that both CCG and MOBA fans will be familiar with; Attack Twice (Ravaging Claws), Gain 2 Armor Stacks (Regenerating Coat) and Move Behind Highest Health Ally (You Deal With It) to list a few.

After a little more in-game action (and what appears to be a buff card either being played after, or negating a debuff card), we get some more combat close-ups, doing a beautiful job of showcasing the high-end visual fidelity of the game in its current build.

We end with a very smooth slide-into-jumping-roll animation featuring Clementine herself, before the video draws to a close.

In the space of just 45 seconds, Big Red Button and Pixelated Ink have thoroughly grabbed my attention. Though the exact detail of the blockchain integration is yet to be revealed, no trailer or game dev update has got me as intrigued for an upcoming Web3 title as this one.

Clementine’s Nightmare does appear to seamlessly blend auto-battler, CCG and MOBA elements, and I’m eagerly awaiting the game demo walkthrough at 4 UTC today to discover more. I’m sure I’ll be seeing some of you there too!

Tune in to the game demo walkthrough at 4 UTC today.

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