Call it GameFi, Play-to-Earn or NFT gaming, a new breed of games are coming, riding the tidal wave created by the success of pioneer games like Axie Infinity. In 2021, Axie went from basically zero to 2.3 million daily active players at the end of the year. During the same one-year period, the Axie Infinity’s AXS token saw an increase in market value exploding from $0.57 per token a year ago, to $97 at the time of writing a year later – that’s a 170x appreciation in one year.
However Axie being the obvious poster child of the emerging NFT gaming market, there are a number of games that gaming enthusiasts and investors alike should keep an eye on. According to Swedish YouTuber and NFT gaming expert Anders Björk, these are 13 NFT gaming projects, on various platforms like Ethereum and WAX, worth following and of course to play in the coming year.
“I have this vision of fully functioning game economies where people make a living only by playing these games, having fun, and living in this virtual world. I think we are getting closer to a reality where normal people can play games for a living. This will change the world, in ways no one can imagine,” Anders Björk says.
According to Björk, all games in the list below are developed by teams with a solid track record and/or lots of experience in the gaming industry. The list is divided into three categories of games: fully playable games, alpha- and beta releases, and upcoming games.
Fully playable games
Blankos Block Party – https://blankos.com/
Blockchain: Native Mythical, bridge to Ethereum in Q1 2022
“Blankos is one of the best built NFT games, if not the best NFT based game available. It’s smooth, fun and exciting to play, especially if you load up some friends over discord and play together. You will find hours and hours of fun game styles to play, as well as a fully fletched map builder. There are three main game styles: PVP shooter, speed race and collect game mode.”
Splinterlands – card game – https://splinterlands.com/
Blockchain: Hive + WAX
“Splinterlands is one of the first successful NFT games that started out as steem monsters. This game has been around for years, and with their launch of Lands and the splinterlands token, the game took off to new levels over the last few months. It’s free to play, so you can test it out and see what you think before you buy any cool cards or packs.”
Mir4 – MMORPG – https://mir4global.com/
Blockchain: Native
“Mir4 is a fully playable cross-platform MMORPG, where NFT-based characters are a reality. The game looks fresh and exciting, it seems fun to play at first, but then you read reviews and listen to people playing it. Unfortunately, there seems to be mainly bots playing the game, and at the current stage, the tokenomics are unbalanced and pay-to-win. I add it to the list mainly because it is one of the most graphically exciting looking games out there. Mir4 is free to play on steam, so it’s easy to try it out and make up your own mind.”
The Uplift World – Minecraft mod – https://theuplift.world/
Blockchain: WAX
“The Uplift World took a genius route when it came into NFT gaming. They took an exciting game platform and built NFT accessibility on top of it. Why invent the wheel again? Minecraft is a super-successful game that has withstood the test of time.”
“For The Uplift World, you can own NFT Land Keys which give you full right to a piece of land inside their Minecraft servers. They got a few different servers with different rules and settings to please all types of players. By owning a Land Key NFT you and those that you whitelist are the only players able to build and dig on your piece of land. This enables you to build out your Minecraft dream inside a big universe with many other players.”
Alpha & Beta Releases
The Sandbox – Metaverse – https://www.sandbox.game/en
Blockchain: Ethereum
“The Sandbox is likely one of the biggest, if not the biggest and most well known metaverse in the cryptosphere. Landowners in the Sandbox can build out their own game and allow other players to come, engage and play on it. There are many projects that buy land in The Sandbox that we still have no clue what they will use it for.”
“Surely there’s an exciting future for Sandbox with as many stakeholders as there currently are. Big companies, projects and celebrities such as Binance, Atari, Animoca, Snoop Dog, Deadmau5, Flow, Opensea, WAX, Opera, Dappradar and many more, build on Sandbox.”
Phantom Galaxies – open world shooter – https://phantomgalaxies.com/
Blockchain: Multi-chain/Polygon
“I have not yet played this game myself, but it does look very promising. So the rating is solely based on my research of the game.”
“Phantom Galaxies is an open world shooter, based in a space environment, where you control your mech character in a third party view playstyle. Personally, I am not a big fan of arial shooter games, but this does look exciting and I will surely test it out as soon as it goes live. Check out the trailer and look for yourself.”
22 Racing Series – racing game – https://www.22series.com/
Blockchain: Phantasma
“The 22 Racing Series remind me a lot of the feeling of TrackMania nation. The speed and control is really sweet, but the map layout of 22 Racing Series is something entirely new and awesome. They build on the Phantasma blockchain which enables them to do some really cool stuff with their NFTs.”
“Each car in the 22 Racing Series game is a unique NFT. However, each part of the car is also an NFT, and you can take apart and customize your own car, and perhaps sell that exact build to a new player.”
Metropolis Origins – card game – https://www.metropolis-origins.com/
Blockchain: WAX
“Metropolis Origins is built by a talented and experienced team of game developers. It just launched and already has a playable alpha version of their game available on their website. All the cards are NFTs on the WAX Blockchain. Totally worth testing it out!”
Million on Mars: Land Rush – Mars virtual world – https://www.milliononmars.com/
Blockchain: WAX
“The Million on Mars team is made up of tons of experience in the gaming industry and will likely build and deliver one of the better casual games utilizing NFTs. The rating right now is based on their limited alpha release; there are some features needed, such as adding multiple NFTs at the same time to the world. Currently, you can get yourself some NFT land, pick a spot on Mars, and build out your base. You can go and explore the world, brew your coffee, and gather game resources.”
Clashdome Citizens – https://clashdome.io/
Blockchain: WAX
“Built by a small game studio in Barcelona, Clashdome Citizens is a game platform with casual web-based games. Over the last year, the team has added multiple casual Play-to-Earn games for anyone to play. Now they have just launched the alpha version of Clashdome Citizens, which is a Play-to-Earn game that ties together everything on their platform. You will be able to breed your NFT citizens, creating a way to earn more of their in-game tokens, duel other gamers and much more.”
Alien Worlds – metaverse – https://alienworlds.io/
Blockchain: WAX
“Alien Worlds is one of the biggest Play-to-Earn games currently in existence. With many hundreds of thousands of accounts thus far. However, what most people don’t know yet, is that the current state of the game, the mining aspect, is just the first step in Alien Worlds’ roadmap. It’s an economic layer to distribute the TLM token and get people into the metaverse. Soon the Alien World council will launch, which is one DAO per planet in the game, that will have a huge ability to impact the Alien World metaverse.”
Upcoming games
The Forge Arena – https://gen-e.io/
Blockchain: WAX
“The Forge Arena is the most exciting looking NFT game I’ve seen on the horizon. I’m a person that has played tons of games my entire life, and this game has a nice feeling like a match made in heaven between counter strike and Quake. The developers say they were inspired by CSGO and Halo.”
Warsaken – card game – https://warsaken.com
Blockchain: WAX
“Warsaken is a new style card game that is aimed to be released both as a digital and physical game. The NFT art is high quality and the team seem passionate about their project. On their Youtube you can see a gameplay video between one of the team members and his son. Currently, they have a sale of their NFTs for the game, so you can get enough to put forth a deck when their digital version of the game launches.”
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