The crypto and NFT gaming area is busier than ever recently, what with outstanding video games beginning to launch, token airdrops piling up, and a seemingly fixed array of different issues occurring always. It’s so much to soak up!
Fortunately, Decrypt’s GG is throughout it. And in the event you want a fast strategy to get caught up on the newest strikes round crypto video video games, we’re completely satisfied to current This Week in Crypto Video games.
Our weekend roundup serves up the most important information from the previous week-plus—that is an prolonged version as a result of holidays—together with a couple of different tidbits you may need missed.
Largest information
Hamster Kombat TON layer-2: After the fourth-largest gaming token launch of 2024, the makers of Telegram tap-to-earn recreation Hamster Kombat revealed plans to create a layer-2 community on prime of The Open Community (TON).
This got here after a decentralized autonomous group (DAO) vote overwhelmingly voted in favor of the transfer, with 1.1 billion HMSTR token voting energy in favor and simply 104,368 in opposition to. Nevertheless, it is value noting that the prime two voters maintain over 88% of all voting energy as of this writing, giving a few whales immense affect.
Previous to this, the devs introduced that Hamster Kombat’s hotly anticipated (and much-delayed) second season can be “greater than only a recreation,” with three video games now within the works to turn out to be the core of an leisure ecosystem utilizing the IP. Known as HamsterVerse, a closed beta is already underway for 30,000 group members.
Off the Grid stands tall: As the tip of the yr dawned, Avalanche-based shooter Off the Grid raked in some media accolades. Not solely did it win GG’s Recreation of the Yr, however the battle royale shooter additionally received Gam3s’ Recreation of the Yr award and made it to a Rolling Stone year-end gaming checklist.
Gunzilla Video games shared its 2025 plans with Decrypt alongside the GOTY honors. Most notably, this consists of an estimated Q1 2025 date for its GUNZ community to enter mainnet, which might allow its GUN token to be freely traded. Earlier than then, the studio desires to launch ranked and solo queue modes, and open up the remaining 80% of the map whereas kicking off the sport’s storyline.
After that, Gunzilla can be trying to onboard third-party builders to the GUNZ community, and is even eying a attainable Telegram mini app for the ecosystem. It needs to be a giant yr for one among crypto gaming’s greatest success tales up to now.
Illuvium’s subsequent steps: Crypto gaming franchise Illuvium introduced how it will likely be transferring ahead within the new yr. The venture beforehand launched three titles that fed into one another, each by way of shared assets and a story loop—however specializing in all three titles has been too difficult. Going ahead, the workforce will prioritize efforts on one recreation at a time, beginning with the auto-battler Illuvium Area.
The prolonged weblog put up additionally touches on plans to scale back microtransactions, add extra content material, and lift extra funding. Maybe most importantly, the put up ponders the opportunity of briefly shutting down the flagship title Illuvium Overworld till it’s a “absolutely realized expertise.” However coming into 2025, bettering the Overworld MMO expertise is claimed to be the Illuvium workforce’s “prime precedence.”
ICYMI
Telegram recreation Catizen distributed rewards to airdrop go holders on Friday, which noticed holders obtain three completely different tokens.
Iconic gaming model Atari revealed a brand new handheld console, the “My Arcade.”
Zoo, a surging Telegram recreation with over 12 million gamers, confirmed that its mining section will finish on January 31 and that one in-game ZOO token can be equal to at least one future on-chain token.
Sonic SVM confirmed that gamers of its TikTok tap-to-earn recreation will obtain a SONIC airdrop on the Solana blockchain.
Crypto buying and selling card recreation Parallel crossed 6 million video games performed within the historical past of its existence, with builders claiming that it at the moment averages 200,000 video games every week.
Telegram recreation Cat Gold Miner introduced that its token can be listed on Bitget, Gate, MEXC, and different exchanges on Thursday, January 9.
Somebody turned the long-lasting first-person shooter Doom right into a CAPTCHA human verification problem.
GG highlight
Listed below are a couple of of our unique tales from this previous couple weeks that we expect are nicely value a weekend learn:
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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