Case Study
Neon District: Re-designing a Cyberpunk Role-Playing-Game for Web3.
In 2020, Blockade Games released an MVP (minimum viable product) for Neon District — a Cyberpunk RPG (role-playing game) where players competed for Neon (an in-game currency), weapons and armour to equip their characters, build stronger teams and defeat opponents to steal their resources.
The assets that players earned could then be traded on public marketplaces such as opensea.com in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
The MVP was a first of it’s kind and has a loyal fanbase of gamers from the cryptocurrency community.
I initially joined the team to run a UX study, which lead into a full time product design role.
My role
Lead Product Designer
Contribution
UX Research
UI Design
Design System
The Team
3x Engineers
1x UI Designer
2x Illustrators
1x Art Director
1x Narrative Writer
Year
2021-22
Design System
We had two key objectives that we felt a design system would solve:
- Improving consistency across the user interface
- Speeding up the design process
Our design system drew upon influence from Andrew Couldwells book; Laying the Foundations.
The system includes; Foundations, Components and Patterns. We also leveraged $design-tokens to provide a strong base for scalability and modularity.
The development team did an incredible job of building a component library in react.
As with all good design systems we decided to give it a name and ‘🍕 Pizza Juice’ was born.
Page Headings
On order for us to tackle the issue of players struggling to navigate from page to page, we introduced a page heading component. This was a common pattern that appeared across most pages, therefore teaching players where to look to take action on a page.
Toasts
As players had mentioned that there was a lack of system feedback, we decided to introduce a toast component.
Other Components
We created thousands of component varieties and states, allowing us to quickly design entire flows and features quickly and consistently.
NUX (New User Experience)
Players had expressed that there was a lot of confusion about how to play the game and therefore a lot of our focus went into creating onboarding flows to take players through tasks and teach them the basics.
Onboarding flow
I worked with the Art Director, Kyle and Narrative writer, Harry to create and onboarding flow that takes players through all of the key elements of the game and help them show them how to interact with the UI.
Combat UI
One of our primary focuses was to improve the overall combat experience for players. This is not something that was highlighted in our survey, however, we knew that it was going to make a much bigger impact in the game moving forward.
Components & VFX
We created more components specifically for the Combat UI, including a character control panel, CARDs, music player and dialogue boxes. We also worked closely with technical artists to develop a series of overlays and status effects.
A Selection of the 100s of screens that we scrutinised over
We created more components specifically for the Combat UI, including a character control panel, CARDs, music player and dialogue boxes. We also worked closely with technical artists to develop a series of overlays and status effects.
Testimonials
"I would put James on any problem that requires detailed thinking and systemic, organized design. Plus, he's just a likeable chill guy."
Garrett Schultz
Creative Director & Art Curator
If you would like to chat, please drop me an email or connect on LinkedIn
Connect on LinkedIn
© 2026 James Newton. Product Design
James Newton
Product Designer
Case Study
Neon District: Re-designing a Cyberpunk Role-Playing-Game for Web3.
In 2020, Blockade Games released an MVP (minimum viable product) for Neon District — a Cyberpunk RPG (role-playing game) where players competed for Neon (an in-game currency), weapons and armour to equip their characters, build stronger teams and defeat opponents to steal their resources.
The assets that players earned could then be traded on public marketplaces such as opensea.com in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
The MVP was a first of it’s kind and has a loyal fanbase of gamers from the cryptocurrency community.
I initially joined the team to run a UX study, which lead into a full time product design role.
My role
Lead Product Designer
Contribution
UX Research
UI Design
Design System
The Team
3x Engineers
1x UI Designer
2x Illustrators
1x Art Director
1x Narrative Writer
Year
2021-22
Design System
We had two key objectives that we felt a design system would solve:
- Improving consistency across the user interface
- Speeding up the design process
Our design system drew upon influence from Andrew Couldwells book; Laying the Foundations.
The system includes; Foundations, Components and Patterns. We also leveraged $design-tokens to provide a strong base for scalability and modularity.
The development team did an incredible job of building a component library in react.
As with all good design systems we decided to give it a name and ‘🍕 Pizza Juice’ was born.
Page Headings
On order for us to tackle the issue of players struggling to navigate from page to page, we introduced a page heading component. This was a common pattern that appeared across most pages, therefore teaching players where to look to take action on a page.
Toasts
As players had mentioned that there was a lack of system feedback, we decided to introduce a toast component.
Other Components
We created thousands of component varieties and states, allowing us to quickly design entire flows and features quickly and consistently.
NUX (New User Experience)
Players had expressed that there was a lot of confusion about how to play the game and therefore a lot of our focus went into creating onboarding flows to take players through tasks and teach them the basics.
Onboarding flow
I worked with the Art Director, Kyle and Narrative writer, Harry to create and onboarding flow that takes players through all of the key elements of the game and help them show them how to interact with the UI.
Combat UI
One of our primary focuses was to improve the overall combat experience for players. This is not something that was highlighted in our survey, however, we knew that it was going to make a much bigger impact in the game moving forward.
Components & VFX
We created more components specifically for the Combat UI, including a character control panel, CARDs, music player and dialogue boxes. We also worked closely with technical artists to develop a series of overlays and status effects.
A Selection of the 100s of screens that we scrutinised over
We created more components specifically for the Combat UI, including a character control panel, CARDs, music player and dialogue boxes. We also worked closely with technical artists to develop a series of overlays and status effects.
Testimonials
"I would put James on any problem that requires detailed thinking and systemic, organized design. Plus, he's just a likeable chill guy."
Garrett Schultz
Creative Director & Art Curator
If you would like to chat, please drop me an email or connect on LinkedIn
Connect on LinkedIn
© 2026 James Newton. Product Design
James Newton
Product Designer
Contact
Case Study
Neon District: Re-designing a Cyberpunk Role-Playing-Game for Web3.
In 2020, Blockade Games released an MVP (minimum viable product) for Neon District — a Cyberpunk RPG (role-playing game) where players competed for Neon (an in-game currency), weapons and armour to equip their characters, build stronger teams and defeat opponents to steal their resources.
The assets that players earned could then be traded on public marketplaces such as opensea.com in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
The MVP was a first of it’s kind and has a loyal fanbase of gamers from the cryptocurrency community.
I initially joined the team to run a UX study, which lead into a full time product design role.
My role
Lead Product Designer
Contribution
UX Research
UI Design
Design System
Team size
3x Engineers
1x UI Designer
2x Illustrators
1x Art Director
1x Narrative Writer
Year
2021-22
Design System
We had two key objectives that we felt a design system would solve:
- Improving consistency across the user interface
- Speeding up the design process
Our design system drew upon influence from Andrew Couldwells book; Laying the Foundations.
The system includes; Foundations, Components and Patterns. We also leveraged $design-tokens to provide a strong base for scalability and modularity.
The development team did an incredible job of building a component library in react.
As with all good design systems we decided to give it a name and ‘🍕 Pizza Juice’ was born.
Page Headings
On order for us to tackle the issue of players struggling to navigate from page to page, we introduced a page heading component. This was a common pattern that appeared across most pages, therefore teaching players where to look to take action on a page.
Toasts
As players had mentioned that there was a lack of system feedback, we decided to introduce a toast component.
Other Components
We created thousands of component varieties and states, allowing us to quickly design entire flows and features quickly and consistently.
NUX (New User Experience)
Players had expressed that there was a lot of confusion about how to play the game and therefore a lot of our focus went into creating onboarding flows to take players through tasks and teach them the basics.
Onboarding flow
I worked with the Art Director, Kyle and Narrative writer, Harry to create and onboarding flow that takes players through all of the key elements of the game and help them show them how to interact with the UI.
Combat UI
One of our primary focuses was to improve the overall combat experience for players. This is not something that was highlighted in our survey, however, we knew that it was going to make a much bigger impact in the game moving forward.
Components & VFX
We created more components specifically for the Combat UI, including a character control panel, CARDs, music player and dialogue boxes. We also worked closely with technical artists to develop a series of overlays and status effects.
A Selection of the 100s of screens that we scrutinised over
We created more components specifically for the Combat UI, including a character control panel, CARDs, music player and dialogue boxes. We also worked closely with technical artists to develop a series of overlays and status effects.
Testimonials
"I would put James on any problem that requires detailed thinking and systemic, organized design. Plus, he's just a likeable chill guy."
Garrett Schultz
Creative Director & Art Curator
If you would like to chat, please drop me an email or connect on LinkedIn
Connect on LinkedIn
© 2026 James Newton. Product Design
James Newton
Product Designer
Contact