Strategy games hinge on utilizing resources the best way possible to break through and win. Strategy games can be real-time playable or a turn-taker, and have a crossover with some card games or RPGs.
Play to earn has adopted the strategy model in multiple forms, as it is one of the suitable to apply for NFT creation. Tokenized advantage and buying upgraded items creates the circular economy of play to earn, with incentives to hold tokens and reinvest them into the game.
Play2Moon picked 10 of the best up and coming or already realized strategy games in the space to check out in 2022.
Taurion
Taurion is a massive multi player online (MMO) strategy game, part of the Xaya Games portfolio along with Soccer Manager Elite. The game offers a sandbox universe of resouces, but all of the more complex items are crafted and upgraded, and services are provided by players within a circular economy. The game involves allegiance to a league to strengthen positions while building up the resource base.
Taurion is available at:
What Makes Taurion Stand Out
Taurion is a complete strategy game within a metaverse, with complex 3D graphics and an engaging narrative of planetary expansion. The game is in advanced alpha with work completed on its stunning 3D outer planet world. Gameplay is also tied to the Xaya (CHI) token, which has been traded since the summer of 2020.
What are the Pros of Taurion
Taurion is just one game within the Xaya Group portfolio. The Taurion project has completed several reward-based resource competitions. The game has attracted interest and may continue to grow its popularity.
What are the Cons of Taurion
Taurion is using the XAYA blockchain with a relatively low hashrate. The game’s toke would require a new wallet and some risks from attacks on the relatively slow mining. The Taurion game also shows limited OpenSea activity and has the potential to be a game to show its true mass appeal in months, despite being around since 2020.
League of Kingdoms
League of Kingdoms centers around strategic kingdom-building, combined with owning metaverse land plots. The game is available for guest testing with free to play mode, and centers around resource strategies and rebuilding a ravaged kingdom.
League of Kingdoms is available at:
What Makes League of Kingdoms Stand Out
League of Kingdoms has completed its main game mechanics, and is one of the wider known games on social media. The game also has most of the in-demand elements for a play to earn game, including NFT items and digital land. The game’s resources are also present on OpenSea, with packs available at 0.04ETH to start the game with an advantage.
What are the Pros of League of Kingdoms
The game is available for testing with no need to commit to a token or buy NFTs. In early 2022, the game released the LOKA token, with a $2 early adoption price. The game’s social media presence lines it up among the best-known play to earn headlines.
What are the Cons of League of Kingdoms
The LOKA native token has been sinking for days after its launch on January 25. Despite the social media volume, League of Kingdoms has only 14 registered blockchain-based users. The game may not build enough interest in its play to earn component, instead only managing to exist as a free-to-play offer.
Age of Tanks
Age of Tanks is a military strategy game with upcoming metaverse elements. The game’s native AOT token is already active with still developing liquidity on PancakeSwap. Age of Tanks is a game in the closed alpha release stage, but with regular competition rounds and rewards in the form of NFT items and AOT tokens.
Age of Tanks is available at:
What Makes Age of Tanks Stand Out
Age of Tanks is a BSC game and has quickly added users since its launch this January 20. In that early period, only a few hundred users register on DappRadar data, but the game team is active with promotions and competitions.
What are the Pros of Age of Tanks
Age of Tanks is built with a focus of offering a completed, complex gameplay with stunning 3D graphics. The game aims to build a complete play to earn ecosystem. The team opened a wide testing event, with whitelisting available for anyone with a MetaMask wallet.
What are the Cons of Age of Tanks
The game is only available for testing, and has no free-to-play version. The beta version is still upcoming. Using the AOT token requires some knowledge of decentralized trading and understanding the risks of PancakeSwap.
Sunflower Land
Sunflower Land is one of the simple, yet addictive games with very high social media popularity. The game, built on Polygon protocol, recently decided on a a restart due to bot activity. The stress test led to a relaunch plan with a fairer distribution of resources.
Sunflower Land is reachable at:
What Makes Sunflower Land Stand Out
Sunflower land is among the most frequently mentioned games on social media. The popularity and simple gameplay meant volumes that stood out among other play to earn startups.
What are the Pros of Sunflower Land
Sunflower Land has been tested in real life and overcame one of its first bot-related crises. Bot activity has affected most play to earn games, which are struggling to limit earnings to real players. Sunflower Land also has a simple appealing farming strategy model that has proven successful in the past.
What are the Cons of Sunflower Land
Weeks after the game stalled due to bot-driven resource supply, the team has not yet relaunched balances. More time may be needed, but SFF acquired now will not be reflected in the new ecosystem. This led to the SFF token losing its reputation and freefalling on exchanges.
DragonMaster
DragonMaster is a real-time strategy built on Polygon blockchain. As of January 26, 2022, the game launched beta 2.0 for testing. The game’s graphics somewhat resemble Axie-inspired games, with cartoonish 3D characters. DragonMasters is a recently launched game, among the new headlines aiming for attention in the coming months.
DragonMaster is available at:
What Makes DragonMaster Stand Out
DragonMaster relied on its appealing playable characters. The game used the NFT mystery box model and established a presence on OpenSea to boost adoption. The game is bootstrapping itself by building up liquidity from the ground up on QuickSwap.
What are the Pros of DragonMaster
DragonMaster is a new game with high potential, and already relatively high floor prices for its NFTs. Mystery boxes trade above 0.035 ETH and characters have a minimum price of 0.02 ETH. The game will offer airdrops of new NFT items or DMT tokens for early round winners.
What are the Cons of DragonMaster
The game is yet to build enough of a user base to run a viable play to earn economy. The awards and achievements of the current beta game may be at risk if there are problems in the ecosystem. The game has limited data on actual players and risks having only a handful of players for months.
GlyphBound
GlyphBound is a world exploration strategy with a complex storyline based on Japanese Shinto mythology. Players pick NFT playable characters that determine their quest and also produce in-game cosmetic items such as masks and skins. GlyphBound is a gameplay-first project that has entered the NFT stage.
GlyphBound can be reached at:
What Makes GlyphBound Stand Out
GlyphBound is a Solana-based game, offering low gas fees and no royalty fees for its mints. The game’s pixelated graphics combine with a simple world that is ready to play for a variety of quests. The NFT items can be staked to upgrade or produce other images.
What are the Pros of GlyphBound
GlyphBound seems to be gaining popularity on social media, especially tied to its NFT mint of rare Generation 0 items. The game’s map is limitless, and the storyline generates different strategies based on the village chosen as the starting point.
What are the Cons of GlyphBound
GlyphBound is yet to announce its game launch and has no mention of splitting its map into metaverse plots. Compared to other strategy games, the open map and pixelated avatars look like a more basic game. The game has no mention of a native token, and its white paper remains unpublished. In early 2022, the game mostly relied on NFT hype, which may pay out in the future, but is an unknown risk for early buyers.
FIVES NFT
FIVES NFT is a strategy game with a fantasy sports theme, with expected launch some time in 2022. The game relies on team building based on NBA players, along with cosmetic in-game items that reflect real-world sports items – T-Shirts, shoes and team insignia.
FIVES NFT is accessible at:
What Makes FIVES NFT Stand Out
FIVES NFT started its life as an NFT collection, but it has ambitious plans for a strategy game with action elements. Players will acquire DNA items based on real players, then proceed to build playable characters and exploit their strengths in an action-packed, skills-based virtual sports world.
What are the Pros of FIVES NFT
The game has complex tools to build a unique team of Ballers, robot-like characters combining strengths and weaknesses from other players. The combinations to build a team of five Ballers will be infinite. The game allows for the building of a team with any number of custom skill Ballers, and fills out the number up to five with default ballers.
What are the Cons of FIVES NFT
The game will have to compete in different categories, being at the same time a sports, strategy and action game. The full game will arrive later in the year, potentially competing with more established projects. The demand for NBA-derived items is also a big question after months of almost constant NFT launches and strong competition from Sorare, Rarible and other similar sports-derived markets.
Undoomed
Undoomed aims to offer a fair tokenomics for play to earn, while also building an appealing strategy game with a fantasy storyline. The game team focuses closely on the battle statistics and skills for playable heroes, while also working on a viable earnings scheme based on tokenized gameplay rewards.
Undoomed is available at:
What Makes Undoomed Stand Out
What are the Pros of Undoomed
What are the Cons of Undoomed
Undoomed only started work on its game in December, and took a while to focus on art. The actual game may also take months to arrive, like similar offerings in play to earn space. Undoomed may join a booming market, or be met with diminishing demand if its game arrives too late.
WildCard P2E
WildCard focuses on card collection as its core source of game achievements and earnings. The game started selling its starter playable card deck in January 2022, expecting the official launch to arrive soon after. The game relies on character feature statistics to build up a strategy experience.
Wildcard is reachable at:
What Makes WildCard Stand Out
WildCard is one of the games built by the Tacocat Token ecosystem, potentially building a fast and simple play to earn environment. WildCard also stands out for its graphics, inspired by 80’s style arcade game graphics.
What are the Pros of WildCard
WildCard immediately applies the NFT card model to a playable universe. The game has a pre-planned release of several tiers of rare playable cards before the final game release in April 2022. WildCard is thus one of the hot opportunities to grab rare items early and start with a brand-new game.
What are the Cons of WildCard
This game will not appeal to NFT skeptics, who would be more interested in gameplay-first projects. The game is also tied to the Tacocat Token, a meme asset with a very volatile market value. The game’s development roadmap is set to extend into 2023, which may be too slow compared to already established play to earn games.
Heroes of Mavia
Heroes of Mavia is a battle strategy game to build an army and defend a home base with a varied combination of weapons, characters and items. Heroes of Mavia offers both RUBY rewards and NFTs for teams managing successful battles.
Heroes of Mavia is available at:
What Makes Heroes of Mavia Stand Out
Heroes of Mavia is one of the prominent games with social media mentions. Heroes of Mavia focuses on the booming gaming market in Vietnam, and in January 2022 managed to attract $5.5M in private funding.
What are the Pros of Heroes of Mavia
Heroes of Mavia aims to be an AAA grade game, backed by Binance Labs and other accelerators and venture capital hubs in crypto space. The game is also highly active in giveaways and preliminary attempts to build its user base, with multiple opportunities for early gains on NFT items.
What are the Cons of Heroes of Mavia
The MAVIA native token only started trading on January 21, 2022, and is highly unpredictable. The game is also focused on the market in Southeast Asia, and may have problems with exchange listings. MAVIA is only traded on PancakeSwap with limited liquidity.
FAQ
Q: What is a strategy game?
A: Games that focus on statistics and a combination of powers and special qualities usually come under the strategy category. Some strategy games may also include action gameplay or other elements. In play to earn, statistics and strategy are sometimes reflected as NFT items that give advantage within the game.
Q: Are all play to earn games completed?
A: In a very new area of gaming, not all play to earn projects have completed their gameplay. The best approach is to test which game is the most appealing, and avoid over-investing in NFTs or token purchases if uncertain about the game’s chances to launch.
