- Successful games not only brought more players, but retained existing support.
- Both simple and high-grade games managed to navigate the market in 2022.
- NFT ownership and in-game earnings continued to be attractive despite the bear market.
The past year was challenging to the formerly booming P2E industry. But some projects still managed to adapt, find funding and expanding their gameplay. While most games are still trying to find the right mix of blockchain features and gameplay, there are projects that stood out with high-grade production value and balanced tools for value and ownership.
There is no one recipe for a successful P2E or Web3 games, with several models working toward long-term success. Both simple games with high user retainment loops and complex metaverses made the list.
Sunflower Land
Sunflower Land is probably the simplest game to succeed with an organic launch. The game spent six months in closed beta, onboarding 150K users with unique NFT farms.
On December 15, Sunflower Land reached an important milestone – open beta with Polygon ownership. The game requires an NFT purchase and a small donation, though players prefer to keep their earned tokens and items on the internal market, and not try to cash out.
Vulcan Forged
Vulcan Forged is yet another project that overcame a wallet attack and turned into a multi-game hub. The Vulcanverse achieved a high-quality environment with an ancient fantasy theme. Vulcan Forged offers a mix of dynamic games, battle, arena and exploration, as well as mini-challenges. Vulcan Runner is one of the most successful in the package.
Vulcan Forged is also moving soon to its own blockchain, Elysium, growing additional supporters that run several types of nodes and invest in the network.
Axie Infinity
Axie Infinity lost both value and players in 2022. From a peak above 2.7M daily active users, the game fell to around 10K users, with around 20K to 30K during active seasons.
Axie Infinity still managed to launch the Origins update and run two initial seasons, with added Runes and Charms. Home base building may arrive soon in 2023.
Crabada
Crabada managed to create and launch one of the first Avalanche subnets. The game also suffered from the bear market, and achieved an overhaul of all its assets.
Crabada switched from token rewards to earning more NFT, as well as a win-to-earn model with Arena mode. The game banned bots and retained a smaller, but loyal group of real users. NFT upgrades, armor and weapons gained more importance, with tokens reverted back into the game instead of getting sold on the open market.
Wombat Dungeon Master
Wombat Dungeon Master was not the top game this year, but a good example for a sustainable model. The game retained about 10K active daily users.
Wombat Dungeon Master runs on the WAX blockchain and offers play-to-earn and play-to-own. Special crafting challenges and short regular seasons kept players engaged. A regular new tool or resource types and NFT also kept players looking for the next achievement.
The other big type of games that emerged in 2022 were anime-style metaverses and quests, the likes of Nine Chronicles, Tap Fantasy, Dear, Ella and others. Those games kept the earning component hidden, only bringing limited NFT ownership. The goal of the games was to retain traditional gamers.
The past year was turbulent for the crypto market, but Web3 games showed signs that they were capable of existing independently of the value and speculation in that market. With the boost of Animoca Brands investments, venture capital and more funding promised for 2023, Web3 looks like a trend that is here to stay, with new products and older games entering a more advanced stage.
