Zeek's Zoo

Our friends and partners, Imagine If, asked us to join them in extending an educational book on Zero Knowledge circuits. We digested the mathematical concepts and then created a beautifully simple puzzle game to help explain those concepts to others.

Overview

The concepts underlying ZK proofs are complex to understand (even experts call them "Moon Math" because they're so complicated), which means people struggle to understand their impact.

Therefore, Matter Labs has started an "ELI5" educational campaign to equip all who are interested with basic intuitions around ZK fundamentals in a fun and engaging way.

It began with a book which teaches the basics of ZK fundamentals. Matter labs wanted to extend the book and create a limited-release video game that could be played online and help teach a semi-initiated audience ZK circuit concepts.

Together with Imagine If we digested the (moon) math, created the game concept, mechanics and design. We then partnered with games developers RamJam to collaborate on the build and character animation in a super tight time frame - 4 weeks!

The Supermarket team then traveled to the EthCC 2024 conference to help present the video game in ZK Sync’s Popup stand at the conference.

Turning a complex concept into game mechanics.

Before we launched into production we had to make sure the math was bullet-proof. Our team’s particular interest in mathematics allowed us to design game play and explanations with fluency and confidence.

After ideating through some initial ideas around game interfaces the light bulb moment was seeing our circuits laid out on a “playing board”. We then asked ourselves if this structure could allow us to build our own circuits? From there we tested and iterated the game board and, together with the client, we settled on this as the core mechanic of the game.

Stepping through the intricacies of the game mechanics for a concept as complex as this was where the fun was. We created mini boards in Miro before we even touched a line of code. We would set each other challenges and started to work out what was an easy, medium and hard difficulty, thereby creating levels for the game. 

The rollout

Once Imagine If and Supermarket had created the concept, fleshed out the script and nailed down the design and art direction it was time to build. EthCC was in 4 weeks time… yikes. So we partnered with our experienced games and animation studio RamJam to collaborate on the build and character animation. 

The ELI5 look is playful and whimsical, a nod to the original ELI5 notion that came from internet culture. We all worked hard to maintain that look throughout the animation and game mechanics. The three separate studios worked beautifully to deliver an amazing product in such a short time frame.

Presenting our work at the EthCC conference at the ZK Sync popup stand allowed us to see our game in action. We loved to see people enjoy learning the ZK concepts through our work. It was a beautiful project to be a part of.