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Author: 0xAkina

Gm gamers!

The onchain gaming ecosystem is continuing to grow.

If you’re deep in the weeds, you may be familiar with established (Relatively speaking) titles like Primodium, Pirate Nation, and Sky Strife.

However, there is a fascinating world of up-and-coming games that goes unnoticed by many enthusiasts.

Today, I’ll shed some light on a few that have caught my attention and that I think you should try.

Let’s get into it!

Dark Frontier is an MMORTS developed by Argus Labs.

An independent reboot of Dark Forest, in Frontier, you’ll capture planets, explore a galaxy hidden by zkSNARKs, and battle other players while doing so.

This is all to serve your ultimate goal - Scoring points and topping the in-game leaderboard.

Dark Frontier first launched on December 15, where Argus held a 2-week competitive round and awarded $7500 in prizes to the winning players.

The event saw significant traction, as per the team, 50,000 users applied for access to game keys.

Under the hood, Dark Frontier is built using World Engine, a framework developed by Argus for creating EVM-compatible L2s optimized for hosting onchain games.

World Engine utilizes a sharded architecture, allowing teams to have scalable networks capable of hosting performance-intensive games.

I was able to participate in the Dark Frontier round and had a lot of fun with it.

The gameplay is similar to what you’d find in OG Dark Forest, but through a different, sleek UI.

On the UX front, I was a fan of the game’s use of account abstraction.

Natively supported by World Engine, this made gameplay far smoother by removing complexity and the need to confirm transactions for each move you make.

With that said, I think Dark Frontier could have improved the rollout of their game keys, as many players did not get access to them (or did so later into the round).

Land, Labor and Capital (LLC) is a tycoon-style game.

Like Roller Coaster Tycoon or Zoo Tycoon, in LLC, you’ll attempt to build a business empire by mining, producing resources, building, accumulating real estate, and trading in the financial markets.

To do so, you must engage in the game’s economy, which is dynamic as land, labor, resource, and asset prices fluctuate based on supply and demand.

LLC is playable and in pre-alpha on Base, opBNB, Arbitrum Nova, and Polygon.

To get started, you can buy a plot of land for 1 USDC or 10,000 LLC tokens. The team also plans to add 2500 new plots to the game on January 30, per their X account.

I enjoy the resource and investment management side of LLC, and in particular the ability to be a degen within the game’s economy.

I think this is a cool component, and illustrates that the game’s economy has a ton of depth and complexity overall.

In addition, I’m a fan of the game’s interesting design features, like the use of Findora’s zk-tech as well as AI NPCs and influencers.

There are a lot of games in Web2 with NPCs. However, there are far fewer onchain titles with them, so LLC is pushing the envelope on that front.

However, I do have some gripes, as I think the game has a bit of learning curve and could use some more guides or documentation.

There’s also no ability to convert your LLC plots back into the tokens you use to purchase them, which is needed for the economy to reach its full potential.

ChainChess is a turn-based strategy game developed by Rickey (Who also created the great aggregation site awmap.xyz).

Similar to its offchain counterpart, in Chain Chess, you’ll play in 1v1 PVP matches with the goal of defeating your opponent.

To win, you’ll need to strategically deploy one of five different pieces during your turns to either:

A) Eliminate all of your opponent’s pieces.

B) Enter their castle, the piece in the back-center of the board.

Chain Chess launched in December 2023 and is now playable on the Redstone Holesky Testnet.

Chain Chess is easy to pick up and understand, with the “How to Play” tab doing a good job of explaining the rules and outlining the differences from traditional chess.

The game also looks great, and the use of burner wallets helps make turns feel smooth. Like account abstraction in Dark Frontier, burners remove the need to confirm transactions during each turn.

With that said, I do think there is some room for improvement with Chain Chess.

For instance, games can be too long, as you’ll often have to wait a while for another player to join or connect.

Additionally, It would be great to play directly with someone you know in real time or against bots to streamline this process.

Deadzone is a turn-based PVP battle royale game developed by Brototype Labs.

In Deadzone, you’ll fight against opponents, evade their attacks, and be the last man standing in order to earn an in-game prize pool.

Matches in Deadzone have two phases:

1. Minting

During this phase, players pay-in and mint an NFT character that they’ll use in the game.

There is a limited amount of time to do so, with the countdown timer to do so resetting after subsequent mint.

2. Battling

This is the “actual” game, where players take turns using one of five different offensive or defensive maneuvers and earn rewards every time they eliminate an opponent.

During battles, players can also trigger the “Deadzone.” which, like other titles in the genre such as Fornite or Warzone, gradually shrinks the size of the battlefield.

At the end of the battle, the final remaining player will take home the aforementioned prize pool made up of the paid-in capital.

I’ve played Deadzone a few times, and I found it to be quite enjoyable when I played with friends.

A considerable amount of strategy goes into the game, as you’ll have to balance going on the offensive and defensive while making tradeoffs.

There is also a lot of social interaction within the game, as you can collab with other players to form alliances, target enemies, or just talk trash.

With that said, Deadzone is still in development, so there are some mechanisms I’d like to see tweaked.

For example, right now the minting phase right can feel too long, as the countdown timer resetting after each mint can significantly increase the length of the game.

All in all, I’m eager to continue keeping tabs on Dark Frontier, LLC, Chain Chess and Deadzone.

All of these games have a lot of potential, and are pushing the onchain gaming envelope in exciting ways, such at the infrastructure layer or with a unique design of their in-game economy design.

Of the ones I listed, Dark Frontier is my favorite. I’m hoping the team launches another round soon!

However, all of these games are definitely worth checking out.

See you in the arena!

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