Introduction
This is the first of a series of articles about blockchain gaming. I am not going to discuss the pros and cons of putting gaming characters and items on the blockchain. I am going to assume that you are or interested in gaming with nfts. I started crypto gaming less than a year ago and have tried numerous games in different blockchains. I am going to tell you what games I am still playing and why. I will start with the Wax blockchain today.
Wax
The Wax gas model is slightly different than the normal transaction fee model. On other chains, you just set up your wallet, fund it and away you go. You would pay a transaction fee whenever you interact with a smart contract, i.e. buying or selling, or performing an action with your nft, e.g. claiming a prize. For Wax, you need to put in an amount of Waxp upfront before you can start playing a game. This is done by staking some Waxp on the CPU, NET and RAM. For gamers, it's mainly the CPU and depending on how many games you are currently playing, you will have to stake a couple of dollars or more.
One thing to note, there are two types of wallet you can use. Most people start with the custodial Wax Cloud Wallet (you don't control your keys). The other type is non-custodial, you are responsible for keeping your own keys safe. Choices are Anchor, Wombat, etc.
Alcor is the decentralised exchange for Wax tokens.
Taco has gained a lot of traction in the recent months and is increasingly becoming the defacto DEX as their Liquidity Pools are usually more liquid than anywhere else.
Games
Two of the top five games on DappRadar are on Wax, namely Alien Worlds and Farmers World. One of the first games that I tried was indeed Alien Worlds. I created a Wax account and started "playing". The game was click a button every few minutes. I didn't understand the concept of the game and gave up after two days. Most of the games on Wax are card games, meaning most of the nfts are just cards with graphics and text. The mechanics of these games lend itself to exploitation. As a consequence, most the CPU on Wax is used by bots doing automated clicks all day long, sometimes making it difficult for real players to do transactions even with ample CPU staked. Despite this situation, I have found a few games that are worth a mention.
Criteria for choosing a blockchain game
- a doxxed team
- decent gameplay
- realistic roadmap
- sustainable tokenomics
Generally, outside of the crypto world, being doxxed is bad. However, having a fully doxxed team in a crypto project is a good thing. It means that project leaders are willing to show their faces by being transparent thus building trust within their community.
With a good team of known developers, you would hope there is enough gameplay there to keep current players engaged and also attract new players regularly.
After that, you would want to see a well layout roadmap that is at least 6 months ahead. If a game is well designed, new features will be built and introduced to the game regularly.
Last but not least, check to see if the tokenomics of the game is sound. What do I mean by that? In-game currency should not fluctuate too much. You know something is wrong if token price keeps going up quickly in a few days or weeks because there is a chance it's a rugpull.
Million on Mars
Needless to say, Million on Mars satisfied all of the criteria above. It is a crafting resource management game. There are over 600 components in the game to craft and combine into structures. There are eight profession paths to choose from. The game encourages specialisation in one or two professions. The in-game marketplace works very well. Materials are a lot cheaper than buying from Atomic Hub or Nefty.
On top of that, there is a companion novel to the game by Keri Waters. The chapters of the novel are being released in the game. Each chapter gives a Research Paper daily. Research Papers are used in Libraries to make professional-specific Research Papers. Professional Research Papers are needed to level up your skills in a Training Hall.
After playing for a while, you would have amassed many buildings and will start running out of stamina to perform all your daily tasks. Martizens was introduced to help with that. They can do everything you can except from loading power cells. They gain experience when you put them to work and can level up the same way you do.
I have been playing for five months and have barely scratched the surface.
Castles
Castles is the product of Trusardi Studios. Like Million on Mars, Castles is also a crafting game, but the similarity stops here. You craft lands, lumber, wood and metal in a medieval setting instead of industrial buildings on planet Mars. Land sizes range from the smallest farm to the biggest castle, with ranch, village, town and city in between. Lands can be merged to become the next size up. So, 3 farms form a ranch, 3 ranch form a village and so on. Another way to get land is from the Baron. A Baron will give you a land (up to a village) a day. All lands emit Metasource every hour. Metasource is one of the essential currency in the game. It is used for merging lands and recharging crafters.
Lumberjacks give daily Lumber, Carpenters give daily Fine Wood and Miners give daily metal. One of the essential ingredient needed to recharge these crafters is Royal Seals. Almost all crafting activities require Royal Seals. You can claim one Royal Seal from a Castle per day. Owning a Castle earns you Metasource and Royal Seal, the two most important resources in the game.
The Dungeon Expansion has just been launched with players crafting Hero Packs. Heroes have 11 slots for their equipment. The more equipment your Hero has the more stamina he gets, meaning the more monsters he can fight.
Similar to lands, Heroes can also be blended to the next tier. Further information about the Dungeon Expansion can be found here.
If you are not convinced, you could try out their latest Free to Play Royal Banquet Expansion. It is now in Season 2 and running for another six weeks from now. You can earn daily Metasource and there will be a raffle at the end. Prizes of the raffle include baron, castle, hero pack and land.
The CEO of Metasource Games Robert Trusardi and game designer Joshua are always on hand on Discord to answer questions.