BlackPool Lab: Monthly Gaming Round-up
With over 2080 blockchain games, it’s often hard to know where to look, but don’t worry, we have you covered with the BlackPool Lab Monthly Gaming Roundup.
This month, we will look at
- Games that the BlackPool Lab is invested in
- Exciting game announcements
- Games already in development
- Noteworthy developments at the intersection of web2 and web3 gaming
- Our watchlist of games
BlackPool Lab (Invested)
Sorare – Chain: Ethereum – Game Type: Fantasy Sports
Football
March has been an eventful month on the football side of Sorare with the announcement of new reward tiers to improve the accuracy of player reward distribution and a club shop where items can be purchased to enhance your gaming experience and competitive edge within Sorare.
The latest news was a further update to the ETH threshold payments from GW359 (Fri 31st March) for competitions where the player cap is set to 240. If you manage to hit 250 with those players, you can earn a threshold payment depending on the division, $5 for Limited, $50 for Rare, $200 for Super Rare and $500 for Unique.
NBA
The NBA continues to excite fans eagerly awaiting the playoffs taking place from 11th April. Sorare registration opened from the 7th, guaranteeing $100,000 in prizes, including NBA merch and much more, with a 15% boost given to all cards bought prior to the start of the playoffs.
As always, there are multiple other tournaments to enter: GW 46 (31st Mar-3rd Apr) saw 10 tournaments available from Limited to Unique plus Common Underdog and Pickup F2P versions.
MLB
MLB Season 2 on Sorare started on March 20th and it gives MLB fans a chance to get back into things after what seems like an incredibly long offseason for those more used to the almost round-the-clock coverage that football enjoys.
New cards are now live on the market for the season and feature up to 5000 Limited, 1000 Rare, 100 Super Rare and 1 Unique card for each officially licenced player.
New competitions are open for the new season with the addition of American League-Only and National League-Only formats, which will run for the duration of the season in addition to the existing All Star and All-Star Pro formats, giving MLB fans up to 11 competitions to enter in total.
Immortal Chess – Chain: Ethereum – Board Game
Boasting $8700 in weekly prize pools, Immortal Chess is fast becoming, one of the most exciting web3 games out there, hoping to become as significant to the game of chess as its namesake and inspiration was back in 1851 in that famous game between Anderssen and Kieseritzky.
They had one of the busiest booths at NFT Paris, with WGM Dina Belenkaya defeating challenger after challenger in exciting games of chess.
MetaFight – Chain: ImmutableX – Sports
The wrestling card game’s alpha version is now available, and MetaFight has started its initial sales with some top cards already auctioned off, such as the Cyril Gane Unique card, which included some match-worn items to round off a very special auction.
The game is currently going through rigorous testing, with regular UI and UX updates improving the experience. The latest update will see a fusion of the game’s collections to create a more enjoyable user experience. Planned rewards and airdrops will be distributed in the middle of April.
SportFaction – Chain: TBC – Sports
https://www.sportfaction.com/ & https://twitter.com/FootFaction
This is a game with interesting elements for football fans and true gamers alike, with the potential to bring the web2 masses into blockchain gaming through its clever use of technology and a strong value proposition.
Exciting times are coming very soon for this project as the team works tirelessly to finalise high-profile partnerships, further develop the game proposition, and design the initial NFT collections with support from BlackPool Lab.
One to watch!
Footium – Chain: Ethereum – Football Manager
Footium is currently in the final stages of its beta testing, with one more season to be completed before the game goes live, allowing for refinements in the match engine, UI and UX departments alongside bug fixes.
The team continues to actively communicate about the development progression, detailing recent advances in frontend match UI, backend infrastructure and scalability, match and player algorithm refinements alongside smart contract auditing and merkle proofs required for the minting of academy players.
On the community front, Footium continues to impress with organic owner meetups all around the world and a creative use of Crew3.xyz to further build organic community engagement.
We can’t wait for the next beta to start and share updates as BlackPool HQ FC continue their journey in the Footium Football League!
Influence – Chain: Starknet – MMO
A space strategy MMO, where you will colonise asteroids, build infrastructure, discover technologies and engage in combat has us really excited, and we can’t wait to get playing. With the latest announcement, it looks like that wait won’t be too much longer, with Summer 2023 confirmed as the proposed launch date.
Before then, there will be a further Asteroid sale (11th-18th April) which entitles owners to an accompanying Adalian crewmate and, more importantly, early access to the Phase 4 public alpha test prior to launch.
Alongside the Asteroid sale, the in-game currency SWAY will also become available for purchase for the first time. This will be the only chance to purchase it ahead of the game’s launch, and you will need to own at least one asteroid and one crewmate to take advantage of this opportunity – each asteroid and crewmate entitles you to purchase up to $2500’s worth of SWAY.
FanLive Rugby – Chain: Eth – Sports
March saw the much-anticipated launch of the new marketplace on FanLive Rugby with the first Silver and Gold cards soon to be up for auction featuring exciting new collections from Stade Francais, Racing 92, Section Paloise and Aviron Bayonnais, with more planned in the coming weeks. Despite launching in an early state, the game is already looking quite promising, so keep a close eye on the marketplace for upcoming auctions of your favourite rugby stars for an opportunity to get in at the ground floor.
Update on new game announcements (new kids in town)
BonesBet – Chain: Avalanche – GambleFi
The 1st of April offered players a chance to experience the first live crypto roulette. With no KYC involved and an opportunity to directly bet with your wallet, it offers frictionless ways to test your luck.
Updates on games already in development
Star Atlas – Chain: Solana – Virtual World
One of the most eagerly anticipated blockchain games in 2023, Star Atlas recently dropped the most exciting sneak peek yet, a full 2:19 look at what is coming from gameplay, asset design and some of the vehicles you will be able to command in the game.
Legions & Legends – Chain: Ethereum – RPG
The first game from AzraGames, Legion & Legends has just announced their partnership with MagicEden to bring their game to a larger audience while benefiting t from Magic Edens web3 gaming hub. Working in-house to develop their own tools to put them at the forefront of video game AIs, there are exciting revelations to be had here.
Civitas – Chain: Ethereum – Simulation
Coming in 2023, Civitas promises to offer a community-driven strategy MMO where you can build, explore, and own your digital assets and gaming experience.
Snippets of alpha gameplay have started to crop up in reveals, and we are looking forward to seeing more of these ahead of the land unveil in Q2, with a Q3 pre-alpha to follow.
Outer Ring MMO – Chain: BNB Smart Chain – MMORPG
Available to play as an Unreal 5-based tech demo, the Outer Ring MMO is already allowing players to explore the game’s universe, complete their first missions and build and create their first assets allowing players to get a good feel for the economic systems within the game.
The final land sales have just concluded, and an exciting partnership with Kinepolis will allow players to interact and view films while playing.
Cards of Eternity – Chain: Ethereum – Trading Card Game
Regularly rated as one of the top upcoming blockchain games, Cards of Eternity by Aether Games is a free-to-play trading card game focussed on stunning graphics, rich artistry, and lore.
It is currently available in open beta on PC, and we expect mobile versions to follow in the future.
The current pre-season ranked tournament is a month-long event (15th March – 15th April) with a $3000 prize pool for the top 1000 players sponsored by our friends at Polkastarter Gaming.
Blocklords – Chain: ImmutableX – Strategy
Like most of the games on this list, Blocklords is frequently touted as a must-watch upcoming title. It offers players a medieval metaverse grand strategy experience with various playstyles allowing players' decisions to change the course of their gaming experience and to chart their own path, whether that be through farming, resource management, fighting or world dominance, with clear similarities to Age of Empires.
With over 265,000 registered users, a $15m funding round and an exciting dynastic inheritance system where character traits are passed from parent to child, this is a game we are all excited to play.
Registration for early access is still open, and various in-game character giveaways are available by following @Blocklords on Twitter. The latest announcement of their partnership with Polygon will further support the player economy through their Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solutions.
Eternal Dragons – Chain: Solana –- Strategy
“The fate of the realm is at your fingertips,” claims the website of Eternal Dragons, a web3 autobattler that only serves as the first chapter of a larger project. Even in its alpha stage, the game boasts a large-scale tournament with 128 players and over 20,000 USDC on the line.
Updates on noteworthy developments at the intersection of web2 and web3 gaming
Blockchain technology has the power to disrupt the status quo and we believe that this is a large part of the contrast between web2 vs web3 gaming. Traditionally, each has taken very different approaches – the former have focussed on playability, and quality graphics where assets are not interoperable, and therefore the players’ assets are locked to the game and the platform, while the latter has largely focussed on earning power and interoperability so far, courtesy of NFTs, decentralised governance structures and easily tradable in-game currencies. Both approaches have merit, and the right solutions will be different for each title, but we believe the coming years will see a merging of the two philosophies into something that represents an extremely exciting new phase for gaming.
Over 1.1 million unique wallets interacted daily with game dapps across 48 blockchains in 2022. GameFi has seen some incredible amounts of funding recently, with over $7 billion in venture capital funds invested into blockchain gaming just last year alone, but it may surprise you to learn that gaming made up 49% of all blockchain transactions in 2022.
One of the ways we will see this happen is when the traditional web2 studios and developers of well-known AAA games start to enter the space, and we have seen that recently with the huge announcement from CCP Games, the creator of EVE Online, confirming they have raised $40m to create a web3 game based in the game’s universe.
Add to that the most eagerly anticipated entrance to web3, Pokémon Go, who have recently advertised for some web3 positions and created a new division of Niantic Labs called DSpotX games. Fun fact: Pokémon was created by a man named Satoshi.
Our list of games we are watching
We keep a close eye on all of the above and many more games: the list below is just a sampling of what’s on our radar.
- Matchday
- Fantium
- PlayMFL
- Stables
- IMVU – friendship discovery and social platform, potentially coming to IMX 2023
- Shrapnel
- Illuvium – Chain: Ethereum – RPG
- Defi Land – Chain: Solana – Simulation
- Splinterlands – Chain: Hive – TCG
- Trickshot Blitz – Chain: Flow – Sports/Pool
- Crazy Defence Heroes – Chain: Polygon – Tower Defence
- Gods Unchained – ETH – TCG
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