Mike is a veteran games and esports journalist whose work has appeared across publications such as Forbes, Vice, and the BBC. Disclosure: He holds CHZ and CRO.
Legendary game developer CCP Games this week lifted the lid on Eve Frontier, a space survival game set in the Eve Online universe that features blockchain integration.
Initially referred to as Project Awakening, Eve Frontier appears to have a lot of similarities to the massive Eve Online game, but with more of a survival focus—and the ability to use crypto tokens and blockchain code to impact and reshape the game in new ways.
With such a prestigious development studio behind it, hopes are high...
When it comes to tap-to-earn games on Telegram, finding any kind of originality isn’t easy. But MemeFi actually puts a unique twist on the formula.
It is essentially the same at its core as many other Telegram games, in that you tap on the screen to earn virtual currency. However, this time there is more of a point, as every time you tap you take a small amount of health off the meme-inspired boss you have to take down.
There’s the usual suspects you would expect to tap on, with versions of Pep...
Endless runner games are kind of hard to mess up at this point. Providing that your character is easy to control and the obstacles in their way never end, then they can offer up hours of entertainment—as exemplified by genre classics like Canabalt, Subway Surfers, and Jetpack Joyride.
But with the formula essentially being perfected by many games over the years (including those above and others), standing out in a crowded market isn’t easy—and apart from some Bored Apes you might recognize, that...
Off the Grid has had an impressive launch thus far, topping the charts and racking up a massive player count. As far as crypto games go, it’s easily the biggest launch to date and has cracked the world of mainstream gaming fans, many of whom don’t even realize there’s blockchain involved. (To be fair, the crypto stuff isn't fully integrated yet.)
But the initial hype of the launch is starting to cool off, leaving Gunzilla Games with its next big challenge: improving and evolving the game so that...
Dookey Dash is back, with the Bored Ape Yacht Club-themed endless runner from Yuga Labs getting a free-to-play rendition on iOS, Android, PC, and Mac with Dookey Dash: Unclogged. It still features some well-known Apes, of course, and is also offering over $1 million in prizes for top-scoring players in the season-ending tournament.
As an Ape riding some kind of submarine through sewers, avoiding all kinds of debris, there isn’t all that much strategy to the game; a lot of it comes down to your r...
With Off the Grid suddenly becoming one of the biggest games in the space right now, attention is starting to turn to the game’s promised earning potential, which looks to be tied to the hex system of loot boxes and the items they contain.
Once all of the Avalanche-based crypto and NFT tech is fully implemented, we suspect that you may be able to make some cash from buying and selling both hexes and the items they contain on the in-game marketplace, and then cash out your earnings on exchanges w...
Off the Grid has quickly become one of the biggest battle royale shooters in the world, with millions of players jumping in to experience the first blockchain game that has really broken into the mainstream consciousness.
But with so many players in the mix—most of whom seem to be experts already—it’s not easy to make it into the final stages of a match, let alone win. It took me six games before my team made it into the top five, and I’m embarrassed to say how long it took me to get a win.
Howe...
It’s hard to make a Telegram tap-to-earn game stand out these days, with countless Hamster Kombat clones vying for your attention. But using the license from a beloved Japanese anime and manga series—about soccer, no less—is one interesting way to shift the vibe for a Telegram tapper.
That is exactly what Captain Tsubasa: Rivals has done, with the tap-to-earn game racking up millions of players since its recent launch, likely thanks to the fact that a lot of people will be familiar with the bran...
If you’ve been on the online shooter video game portion of the internet over the last few days, then you’ve likely heard of Off the Grid, a brand new battle royale game that is picking up serious steam with players. Off the Grid has already topped the Epic Games Store’s list of the most popular free-to-play games, plus it’s commanding huge crowds on Twitch. In short: It’s a hit.
But what you might not know is that Off the Grid is a blockchain game built on Avalanche, with plans for a crypto toke...
Captain Tsubasa: Rivals is a hot new tap-to-earn game on Telegram, and with the license of a major soccer-themed anime brand behind it, a ton of players have signed up to play already. With some kind of TON-based airdrop coming in the future, the race is once again on to collect as much in-game currency as you can to boost any potential future payouts.
Of course, you can tap to earn balls (aka coins or points in other tap games), but like most of these games, the real way to increase your ball...
Condensing the football experience down to a mobile-friendly game is not easy. With so many things going on during each play—all of which you’d want to have control over—the somewhat limited controls of a touchscreen have typically held mobile football games back.
NFL Rivals doesn’t have the perfect answer to this problem, but this NFTs-optional free-to-play game certainly makes a solid attempt across iOS and Android.
On the field, NFL Rivals dumbs down football to its simplest form. There’s no...
The new in-game season of NFL Rivals is here alongside the NFL kickoff, and with it has come a wave of new and returning players hoping to play some mobile gridiron—and maybe earn a few valuable NFTs in the process.
As a mobile game, NFL Rivals delivers bursts of arcade-style fun on iOS and Android. It’s a good way to keep yourself entertained during the TV timeouts on Sundays, assuming you aren’t looking for a full Madden-like simulation.
But as with any game, especially those where there’s the...
If you haven’t heard of X Empire (originally Musk Empire), then all you really need to know is that it’s a Hamster Kombat clone built around Elon Musk. That sentence alone will likely be enough for you to decide if you want to give it a try or avoid it like the plague.
But if you are one of the tens of millions of players who have tried out X Empire in the hopes of scoring tokens in the upcoming airdrop, there are a few secrets you will probably want to know before starting—as unlike in other t...
When it comes to American football games, the Madden franchise has long been the cream of the crop. But now it has some competition—not just from EA Sports’ own College Football game, but also in the form of mobile game NFL Rivals, which incorporates NFTs.
While NFL Rivals isn't trying to top Madden when it comes to presenting a lifelike simulation on your game console, it’s a free-to-play, arcade-style mobile football game that has the same official licenses from the league and players, offeri...
In a world full of tap-to-earn games such as Hamster Kombat and Notcoin, hearing that a Telegram game has a slightly different mechanic—no matter how simple—is kind of refreshing.
Instead of making you tap endlessly on the screen, Catizen has you swipe to combine cats together to increase their level and value—which, while effectively as simple as tapping, does require a bit more of your attention.
Claiming over 34 million users, Catizen has found a major audience thanks to its cutesy vibe, sli...
Millions of players have tapped on Elon Musk’s face over the past few weeks, thanks to the new hit Telegram game, X Empire—or Musk Empire, as it was originally called.
Looking for a way to differentiate X Empire from the mountain of tap-to-earn games on Telegram such as Hamster Kombat and Catizen, the development team swapped out cute pet visuals for a cartoon image of Elon Musk that you need to tap to rack up piles of in-game cash.
The number of players suggests that this approach is working, w...
MemeFi is the latest Telegram tap-to-earn game to announce the initial details of its airdrop to players, with just over a month to go until MEMEFI tokens are handed out on October 9.
With this news, however, there’s surely an influx of players joining the game for the first time, and veterans are no doubt looking to maximize their earning potential by getting as far into the game as possible before the deadline hits.
There’s currently no word on exactly what the criteria for earning tokens in...
For the most part, the current crop of popular Telegram games such as Hamster Kombat and X Empire don’t look particularly appealing—from a visual standpoint, at least. From very basic menus to what appears to be AI-driven artwork and a complete lack of engaging effects, the absence of any real visual stimulation has been one of my main complaints of the budding genre.
But PokeyQuest, a Telegram tap-to-earn game that appears to have around half a million players so far, fixes that issue by… let'...
Over the last few months, I’ve played a lot of Telegram tap-to-earn games. From Hamster Kombat through to Catizen and X Empire, I’ve tried them all—and almost always come away disappointed at how little there is to actually do in them. Now, amazingly, a game about pooping dogs is keeping my interest.
Dog Pooper, which is its actual name, has a similar swipe-to-combine mechanic as Catizen. But instead of combining cats, you drop piles of dog poop on top of each other to generate even better (or...
I was ready to sing the praises of PixelTap for being a Telegram-based tap-to-earn game that was trying to do something different. But amid recent changes, one new feature in the Pixelverse game has killed any chance of me continuing to play.
Compared to other prominent tap-to-earn games, PixelTap is more involved than just blindly tapping the screen, as you are thrown into battles against other players and have to tap in specific areas of the screen to take them down.
When you get matched again...
