Impact Theory
Merry Modz
Designed end-to-end UX/UI across Web3 minting, seasonal games, and interactive collectibles, helping a 10k NFT drop sell out in under 3 days.
TL;DR
- I designed the mint for a 10k NFT drop that sold out in under 3 days.
- I designed the free-mint and pre-sale flow for Founders Key holders, and it worked flawlessly.
- I designed the Krampus burn-to-mint: three Barks burned to mint one Krampus.
- I directed design for two 2023 holiday games, Dark Forest Run and Merry Memory Modz; repeat play sessions rose 22% (team-reported).
From my résumé: Directed design for Merry Modz: Dark Forest Run and Merry Memory Modz, improving repeat play sessions by 22%.
An Impact Theory project. Jonathan worked on it as Senior UX/UI Designer at Impact Theory (November 2021 – September 2024).
The gist
The premise: Not a simple generative PFP drop, but a Christmas-mythology franchise built for the long game.
The reality: The art wasn't the hard part. Keeping identity across 10,000 variations was.
I designed end-to-end UX/UI for Merry Modz across Web3 minting, seasonal games and interactive collectibles, including the mint for a 10k NFT drop that sold out in under 3 days.
The fine print
- Role: Senior UX/UI Designer, Impact Theory. I designed the Merry Modz mint and directed design for Dark Forest Run and Merry Memory Modz.
- Engagement: Individual contributor
- Team: Tom Bilyeu (exec and IP visionary), artist Francisco "HerreraBox" Herrera, and a team of 50+ artists and 3D specialists. Gabriel "Fluffy" Iglesias voiced SnoBo.
- Timeline: Mint in November 2021, seasonal drops and games through 2023, and a Bruce Lee avatar crossover with Project Kyzen in 2024
- Platforms: OpenSea, Discord, Project Kyzen (playable 3D avatars), an animated short, and Dark Forest Run (Unreal Engine 5)
- Tags: Product design · Game UX · Web3 · Visual design
Where I sat
The project ran on a rare triangle: Tom Bilyeu as exec and IP visionary, Francisco "HerreraBox" Herrera as the artist, and me as the designer responsible for UX, visual systems and cross-platform design. I designed the mint, and later directed design for two of the franchise's games.
The frame
November 2021: NFTs were at the center of the culture conversation, and Impact Theory Studios wanted in with something ambitious. That meant a 10,000-character 3D generative collection with real lore. SnoBo, a snowman who believes he can't change, accidentally imprisons Santa in ice and has to assemble a team of misfits to save Christmas.
Generative collections at the time had a standard failure mode: thousands of technically distinct outputs that felt interchangeable. Merry Modz couldn't afford that. Each Mod had to read as a specific someone everywhere it showed up: as an OpenSea thumbnail, a Discord PFP, a playable 3D avatar in Kyzen and a film character.
What I made
Traits that do narrative work. The accessories, color palettes, expressions and seasonal variations weren't just visual attributes. They were story signals, so a specific combination implied a personality. The system had to be flexible enough for 10,000 outputs but intentional enough that each one held character.
The decision I'd defend: the free-mint and pre-sale mechanics. Founders Key holders had two overlapping perks: pre-sale access, and one free mint per Legendary or Heroic key. Each key had its own history, so the mint modal made eligibility explicit, key by key, instead of making people guess:
- Who you are, up top: the connected wallet, how many Founders Keys it holds, its ETH balance, the contract address and a live gas-price chip.
- One row per key, each with its own Pre-Sale and Free Mint? checkboxes. The free mint was a choice, not an automatic: holders could redeem it or pay full price.
- Explicit, inline error states: a key that had already used its perk said so in red, right on its row ("This Founders Key has already redeemed its free mint."), and a key without pre-sale access said "Not Eligible for Pre-Sale".
- Live cost math at the point of commitment: "1 Merry Modz costs 0.07 ETH. Excluding gas fees.", then Total Quantity and Cost updating together, a link to the FAQ, and a single Mint Now button.
The free-mint and pre-sale mechanics worked flawlessly, thanks to clear documentation and user experience.
The friction
The hardest call was asking people to burn something they loved. For the 2022 Krampus activation, we had to decide the mechanics: burn three Bark NFTs to mint one Krampus. People really loved making their Barks. Decorating them was the most personal thing in the whole collection, so it felt cruel to make them burn those to receive the villain of the Merry Modz world. A burned token is gone, so the flow had to make the stakes clear, make the reward feel worth the sacrifice, and hold trust through a transaction that can't be undone.
What shipped
- The 10k drop sold out in under 3 days. Pre-sale opened November 17, 2021, and public minting on November 18.
- Repeat play sessions rose 22% across Dark Forest Run and Merry Memory Modz, per our dev team's analytics, reported through our project manager.
- It kept going: the Eyes of Fire animated short (December 24, 2022), the Bark decorating experience every season from December 2021, the Krampus burn-to-mint in the 2022 season, two games in 2023, and the Bruce Lee avatar crossover with Project Kyzen in 2024.
What I'd carry forward
Knowing what the space became, I'd have designed even more defensively for platform independence. The strongest version of Merry Modz is the one where the IP works whether or not Web3 is the delivery mechanism, with characters strong enough to carry that. HerreraBox's are. SnoBo is a real character. That's the foundation that holds.
"Irreversibility is the UX problem Web3 invented and the industry hadn't fully figured out. Designing it responsibly required judgment."
The full story
The mint page
The mint page carried the franchise's attitude: the Merry Modz logo, Santa holding a very large gun and the headline "Don't Mess With Christmas". The public terms were 0.07 ETH per Mod, bulk minting of up to 15 per wallet to save on gas, and one free mint per Legendary or Heroic Founders Key. Mints arrived as numbered "boxes" (holders were invited to find their "box buddy", one number above or below) and were opened at "UNWRAP" reveal events. When minting closed, the page flipped to its end state: a "Sold Out!" gift tag and a "Buy on OpenSea" button pointing holders to the secondary market.
A day into the public mint, the team shipped a mobile update that brought all of the desktop functions to mobile minting. After the 2022 season, holders got a survey asking what they loved and what we could improve.
The games
Dark Forest Run was a full Unreal Engine 5 game, released in 2023 and playable by November 14, open to Merry Modz holders and Kyzen item holders. Partner communities (World of Women, Chiptos, 0N1 Force and Quarter Machine) got airdropped access on December 1, 2023. Players chose between Candy Cane, Snowballz and Snow Blaster loadouts, and SnoBo trained alongside Kip, the engineering elf. There was a main campaign plus Snowball Sniper, a competitive mode. The UX carried Merry Modz conventions into the new context: inventory through a "Loop Paused" modal, leaderboards and countdown timers. A dark navy and deep crimson world, drawn from HerreraBox's work, signaled a more dangerous chapter.
I directed its design, and the flow file lays out the order. You enter from the Project Kyzen lobby into a red-banner menu: Loops, Stats, Badges, Settings and Exit. Levels are "loops," cards with a short brief, your best score and Replay or Start. Blasters live in the same menu: pick one, see its price (Santa's Little Helper is "~$15" with 0.007 ETH underneath) and buy it, or equip one you own. A loop starts with a loading screen that teaches as it waits ("Looping into... Level 1, Run for your Life" with a keyboard map for move, sprint, dodge and jump), then a 3-2-1 countdown, then the HUD. From there a run ends one of two ways: "You Melted," with Exit Now and Try Again, or a final score built from bonus tiles for accuracy, friendlies, ammo, victory and health, where you enter a name for the leaderboard. Badges pop up as "Achievement Unlocked" cards along the way.
Two decisions carry the HUD. SnoBo's portrait is the health readout: he grins at full health, winces as the bar drains, and turns into a skull when you're nearly done, so you can read damage from the corner of your eye. And the blaster price leads in dollars, with ETH in small type underneath, so the cost reads at a glance.
Merry Memory Modz was one of the many holiday games we created, released in 2023: a tile-matching game that went live by November 28, 2023, where players flipped tiles and matched them to win prizes from "Santa's secret stash." I directed its design. You pick Solo or Dual on the first screen. Solo comes in board sizes from Easy (4 x 6) to Medium (4 x 9) and up, against a timer and a flip counter under the wreath at the top; finishing shows your final time, score, flipped count and total matched, with Leaderboard, Play Again and Start New Game. Dual is two players, Santa against Krampus: the same slot at the top swaps the timer for each player's matches and says whose turn it is.
Two decisions show in the screens. The loading modal is randomized per game, and each one is a teaser for Dark Forest Run, one of its levels or blasters, with Kip's handwritten note on the side, so a quick memory round also pointed players at the bigger game. And the holder gate doesn't end in a wall: connect a wallet with no Merry Modz and SnoBo says "Uh-oh! Looks like your wallet is on the 'Merry' diet," with a link to the secondary market.
The collectibles
The Bark decorating experience was first live on December 17, 2021, and came back each season with new ornaments and backgrounds. It was a wallet-aware, personalized digital ornament system. It read each holder's wallet and delivered ornaments based on what they owned, so different characters, traits and holding history produced a different experience. Under the hood it was wallet connectivity, on-chain reads and dynamic delivery. On the surface it had to feel like Christmas morning, not a blockchain transaction.
The franchise also crossed platforms. Limited-edition MM Snow Blasters, designed by HerreraBox, were earnable in Dark Forest Run and usable only in Project Kyzen.
The market underneath
The NFT space collapsed faster than most people predicted, and NFT-based funding is volatile. Building animated features, video games and interactive experiences at the same time demanded exceptional execution across very different domains. What kept trust was honest communication with the community. Projects with genuine narrative IP and real artistic investment survived the crash better than most, and Merry Modz was one of them.
Ask about this project
Questions about Merry Modz? Email connect@girtonian.com.