With the conclusion of the Black Myth: Wukong “Destined Rebirth” chapter, another journey quietly reaches its midpoint—this is the pilgrimage of a new generation of Web3 games. As one of the classic narratives in Web3, GameFi is gradually shifting from “play to earn” to “play for play,” placing greater emphasis on gameplay rather than financial elements. Just as Wukong grew through challenges and adversity, these Web3 games are also on a journey to find their true essence. This report, as the first in this semester’s PKUBA·SectorScan series, will focus on mapping out the Web3 game projects in various sub-sectors with the most potential to “break out” in 2024, similar to Black Myth: Wukong.

Hamster Kombat: The Web3 Exploration Journey of Hamster

Hamster Kombat is a “tap to earn” Web3 game that combines nurturing, combat, and social elements. Players can raise their own mice and participate in real-time battles to earn tokens and unique NFT rewards. The project has a governance token and an in-game token; the former is used for community decisions, and the latter for purchasing items and upgrades. On September 26, 2024, Hamster Kombat officially launched its airdrop, and its ecosystem token HMSTR was simultaneously listed on over ten major exchanges, including Binance, OKX, and Bybit, creating the largest airdrop user base to date with over 300 million users.

Players can enhance their mice’s attributes through various methods, including training, feeding, and upgrading; they can also enter their mice into the arena for real-time battles to compete for rankings and rewards. The project’s token, $HMSTR, is primarily used for community decision-making and voting, purchasing items, and upgrading mice. In Hamster Kombat, players’ exchange tiers are based on their game score balance, with nine levels ranging from Bronze to Grandmaster. Notably, Hamster Kombat’s success is an atypical case. In March 2024, the game launched a Telegram channel and went live without any investment background. Initially, there was minimal discussion on Twitter, but with a boost from Notcoin, it gained significant traffic. By May, Hamster Kombat had 15 million users, with its Telegram channel ranking third globally. Subsequently, user numbers surged to 300 million, with 69 million subscribers, making it the world’s largest. The game’s success is mainly attributed to its high playability—its diversified nurturing system, real-time combat mechanics, and social interaction elements allow players to enhance their mice through training, feeding, and upgrading while engaging in intense real-time battles against other players. Compared to other games, Hamster Kombat’s unique “tap to earn” mechanism lowers the barrier to entry, making it easy for more players to participate and earn rewards. Additionally, the team’s innovative strategies in promotion and social media engagement enabled the game to quickly attract and retain players, helping it stand out in the Web3 gaming space.

Additionally, the team employed savvy traffic-driving strategies, including daily news programs and social media interactions, which quickly boosted follower numbers and viewership, leading to recommendations on social media platforms.

However, Hamster Kombat also faces significant challenges with its airdrop distribution. As the user base grew rapidly, how to allocate airdrops fairly became a critical issue. Previous large airdrop experiences mainly focused on millions of users, but Hamster Kombat did not implement an effective anti-sybil mechanism in the early stages, leading to widespread participation by “airdrop hunters,” making it difficult to identify sybil accounts, which could affect the rights of genuine users. Although the official claim is that the user base reached 300 million, the actual number of users eligible for the airdrop was 131 million, with 2.3 million sybil addresses identified. Hamster Kombat emphasized that due to fraudulent activity, the game had banned these 2.3 million users from participation. In September 2024, Hamster Kombat revealed its roadmap for 2025, focusing on the continuous development of the game and community engagement. Plans include launching new features and updates to enhance the gaming experience, as well as expanding the NFT marketplace and game ecosystem.

Seraph: A Dark Horse in ARPG

Seraph: In the Darkness is a dark fantasy-style, NFT-based action ARPG Web3 game. Since its official launch and season start in November 2023, Seraph has maintained strong popularity. According to DappRadar data, Seraph’s Unique Active Wallets (UAW) exceeded 1 million in the past 7 days, making it the second-largest in the #GameFi sector. Transaction data has similarly surged. As a representative of second-generation blockchain games, Seraph has consistently set new records since its Alpha test in April 2023, which garnered over 10,000 registrations. In the fifth test, Season S0, the average daily active users (DAU) reached 15,000, with a 14-day retention rate exceeding 30%, generating millions of dollars in revenue and emerging as a dark horse in the ARPG sector.

The impressive success of Seraph can be attributed to the strong support of its team. The Seraph team is incubated by the South Korean gaming giant Actoz Soft (listed on Kosdaq), with over 15 years of experience in developing dark fantasy games. After embracing Web3, the team demonstrated remarkable iteration capabilities: they quickly grasped Web3 concepts, technical frameworks, and tokenomics, and, without being limited by the explorations of earlier players, found a new positioning and approach for Seraph. Their rich development experience spanning both Web2 and Web3 also ensures the game appeals to players from both sectors. In terms of funding, Seraph, backed by the resources of a major Web2 gaming company, did not adopt a community fundraising model but instead self-funded its development, earning the community’s trust through the high quality of the game itself, reflecting the team’s confidence in their development skills.

In terms of gameplay, Seraph inherits the classic elements of dark fantasy games such as equipment enhancement, character development, and dungeon exploration, while incorporating AI companions and various MMO elements, leading to numerous innovations, including multiplayer teaming, PVP rankings, and player-driven markets, significantly enhancing the game’s playability and social aspects. Regarding tokenomics, players can enter the game for free and have the opportunity to acquire rare assets through gameplay. Additionally, players can directly use unique NFT equipment to produce “Soul Spars.” Soul Spars have a wide range of consumption scenarios in the game, with multiple mechanisms in place to combat inflation, ensuring the stable development of the game economy. Furthermore, Seraph features season rewards to encourage players to craft exclusive equipment, promoting the circulation and trading of gear, thereby creating a diverse and ever-evolving economic ecosystem.

In terms of the game’s tokenomics system, Seraph differs from most Web3 games that adopt a “dual-token” model. According to the whitepaper, Seraph will only launch a single token in the future. While the current single-token model is relatively stable, as the player base grows, maintaining economic balance while mitigating the effects of inflation will present a key challenge. The stable operation of the single-token model will provide the team with a valuable opportunity to demonstrate their innovation and management capabilities.

Parallel: A New Attempt to Break Through in Sci-Fi Themed TCG, a Strong Competitor to Hearthstone

As one of the collectible card games (TCG), Parallel leverages the power of NFTs to give players ownership of their cards and other in-game assets, allowing them to trade these assets between players, much like Yu-Gi-Oh! (Game of Kings). In October 2021, the project secured $50 million in funding from Paradigm at a $500 million valuation and opened its beta test in February 2024. Later, in March 2024, the company raised $35 million, with over 20 venture capital firms, including Solana Ventures, Distributed Global, and OSS Capital, participating. Among the founding team, Sascha Mojtahedi, one of the six co-founders, has nearly 16 years of project development and operations experience. Three of the team members come from the University of Waterloo in Canada, giving the team a strong Canadian background. The core design team consists of former members from renowned studios such as Epic Games, Blizzard, and Riot Games, bringing valuable experience and a strong backing from major industry players.

Compared to existing TCG card games, Parallel has unique highlights in the following dimensions: First, the game’s world is based on a sci-fi theme, which sets it apart from current themes, creating a strong initial appeal and potential for high early-game excitement. Second, in terms of gameplay, the core of the game revolves around building card decks, allowing players to focus on enhancing their decks and competing in PVP ranked battles for enjoyment. By designing a large number of cards and synergistic effects between them, Parallel offers many possibilities, enabling players to fully leverage the game’s complexity to create optimal decks. Despite the large card pool, Parallel emphasizes card balance and allows for card decomposition and synthesis, enabling players to construct any card they need. This feature is likely to attract a significant number of free players, helping to build the game’s ecosystem. In terms of art, Parallel pays great attention to the texture of its cards and the immersive gaming experience. In contrast, many other Web3 TCG card games rely on AI-generated assets, which makes Parallel stand out with a distinctive artistic style in the blockchain card game space. As a result, Parallel has successfully emerged as a “catfish” in the TCG card game sector, presenting a significant challenge to the existing TCG game ecosystem.

Although Parallel has successfully broken into the TCG card game space, there are still many challenges in becoming a long-lived game with a large, dedicated player base. First, based on current player feedback, the game’s UI design has some flaws, such as unclear card text, lag, and crashes. Second, the game lacks a tiered matchmaking system in combat, with limited defeat compensation for new players, which results in a lack of positive reinforcement within the game. Finally, the game’s economic cycle design still needs improvement. As the number of new players and cards grows, finding ways to clear out old cards and address in-game inflation will be crucial for maintaining the game’s replayability and user retention.

As of now, Parallel has completed 8 seasons. With the continuous improvement and optimization of the game, the impact of Parallel on the current TCG card game landscape is something to watch closely.

SHRAPNEL: A Free-to-Create FPS Game

Shrapnel is a first-person shooter (FPS) game that combines traditional high-quality gaming experiences with Web3 technology. Developed by industry veterans who have worked on well-known games like Halo and Call of Duty, Shrapnel completed an initial funding round of $10.5 million in 2021, with participation from Dragonfly, Three Arrows Capital, and angel investors including Keith Nunziata (Citadel Global Equities) and Jason Zhao (Kleiner Perkins). The game later raised an additional $27 million in subsequent funding.

Unlike many blockchain-based games, Shrapnel emphasizes high-quality graphics and a polished gaming experience, rivaling top-tier traditional FPS games. Most blockchain games focus on virtual worlds or metaverse concepts, emphasizing player-driven creation and social experiences, with less focus on in-game combat. Shrapnel, on the other hand, highlights intense combat and strategic thinking, where players can earn rewards through high-risk missions. This sets it apart in the blockchain gaming market.

Shrapnel also offers powerful user-generated content (UGC) tools, allowing players to create characters, weapons, maps, and more, which can then be minted as NFTs and made available for other players to use or trade. The creation tools in Shrapnel are closely integrated with its combat mechanics, ensuring that the content players create has practical value within the game.

However, at the end of 2023, the game studio filed lawsuits against several investors, accusing them of attempting to seize control of the company and its treasury. This led to significant doubts surrounding the game, which was highly anticipated for both 2023 and 2024. The internal issues have since been resolved, and Shrapnel has launched on Epic, continuing to gain attention across major platforms and gaming communities. There is hope that, under the leadership of a strong team with experience from companies like Disney and Ubisoft, Shrapnel will deliver even more impressive results in the future.

Illuvium: The Pinnacle of Web3 Open-World Adventure and Combat

Illuvium is a 3D open-world game built on Ethereum L2 (Immutable X), where players can explore and actively shape the world. Developed by the Illuvium Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), the game revolves around finding and capturing strange creatures called Illuvials. Players can battle their collected Illuvials against creatures from other players. Additionally, players can earn rewards based on their success in these battles.

Illuvium consists of four games within its ecosystem: Illuvium Overworld, Illuvium Arena, Illuvium Zero, and Illuvium Beyond. The game features five classes: Guardian, Fighter, Rogue, Psion, and Empath, as well as five affinities: Water, Earth, Fire, Air, and Nature (e.g., Earth Psion). Players can stack and combine up to two affinities to gain energy boosts. The Illuvial NFTs that players capture are stored on the blockchain in their cryptocurrency wallets. In the game, they store characters in Shards, which vary in strength. Stronger Shards can support more powerful Illuvials. Since its launch, Illuvium has attracted significant attention from the Web3 community due to its rich ecosystem and engaging gameplay.

The innovation of Illuvium lies in two key aspects. First, Illuvium distinguishes itself from competing dApps by focusing on gameplay and play-to-earn mechanics while offering high-quality, continually evolving NFTs. It combines elements of classic RPG collection games with the popular combat mechanics of Auto Battlers. Additionally, it offers zero gas fees and sub-second transaction speeds through L2 (ImmutableX). The game’s development team consists of 71 members, including 15 core team members. Co-founder Kieran Warwick has extensive entrepreneurial experience. He entered Web3 in 2015 and served as the marketing director of an Australian OTC exchange. Later, with the rise of DeFi, Kieran re-entered the Web3 space. Co-founder Aaron Warwick studied computer engineering and physics at university and later became a game designer for Illuvium. Since 2021, the game has completed four rounds of funding, raising a total of $65 million, with $12 million raised in March 2024. Currently, the team has strong financial backing.

The token $ILV derived from the game has two main advantages: (1) Efficiency: Immutable X uses advanced ZK Rollup technology to enable fast and low-cost transactions on Ethereum. Compared to the Ethereum mainchain, $ILV has significant advantages in terms of transaction speed and fees. (2) Ecosystem Growth: With the booming NFT market, the $ILV ecosystem is continuously expanding, with many well-known projects joining Immutable X, providing strong momentum for its development. However, since the code for the various games in Illuvium has not been made public yet, its security remains uncertain, and there may be potential threats from cheating software in the future.

Eighty-One Trials Must Be Endured To Obtain The True Scriptures

Just like the 81 trials in Journey to the West, the path to obtaining the scriptures is never smooth sailing. The growth journey of Web3 games is also full of opportunities and challenges: Hamster Kombat, although facing challenges in airdrop distribution, has explored new possibilities in combining breeding, combat, and social elements; Seraph, with room for improvement in its tokenomics, has stood out in the ARPG field thanks to its strong team and innovative gameplay mechanics; although Parallel still needs to resolve issues with its UI and matchmaking system, its sci-fi theme and high-quality artwork have successfully attracted a large number of players; Shrapnel, despite experiencing internal turbulence, continues to draw attention due to its exciting combat design and rich user-generated content; and Illuvium, even with risks in security and the market, is still highly regarded for its rich ecosystem and high-quality NFTs. Finally, how to further enhance the acceptance and participation of traditional Web2 users will be a challenge faced by all Web3 games. Just as each of Wukong’s growths was shaped by hardships, Web3 games, too, can only find their true scriptures in the vast digital world after going through the trials and tribulations.

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