Alien Worlds Review

Alien Worlds is a Web3 card-based play-to-earn game in which you mine for Trilium on your choice of six different worlds. The game is a metaverse that offers you NFTs in the various forms of mining tools, minions to help you, land to mine, and weapons to defend your claims.

The developers of Alien Worlds, Dacoco GmbH from Switzerland, describe the game as free to play, and have developed what is frankly a fascinating backstory. The cinematic trailer seems to confirm this, as it’s literally bursting with artistic references to The Matrix, Star Trek, Interstellar, Sid Meier’s Civilization expansion packs, and any other noteworthy science fiction utopia. There must be a reason why Alien Worlds is essentially the most popular Web3 game around.

What Is Alien Worlds About?

Alien Worlds is set in the year 2055, an unimaginably distant future where humankind has discovered a wormhole leading to equally distant, habitable planets. Players take on the roles of fortune-hunters seeking to escape the “pandemics” of Earth. And what are these fortunes? Trilium, which could be described as a digital mineral, is readily available on all six of these planets, and you gotta’ mine it!

Once you’ve mined enough Trilium, you can use it to buy and upgrade your tools and other NFTs, which are issued as in-game cards. You can also “stake” it in planetary elections, participate in various missions, and earn money in these processes.

Getting Started in Alien Worlds

In theory it should be easy to get started in Alien Worlds. And it is, if you already have a WAX wallet. The part that makes it difficult is getting that WAX wallet. If you’re new to Web3 gaming, this could prove to be quite the insurmountable task. Those beautiful graphics in the trailer, however, keep you going.

Once you’re in, you’re asked to choose a card for an avatar of a human character. This card itself is an NFT you can upgrade throughout gameplay.

Next, choose a planet to start mining. There are six to choose from.

We ran into some sort of technical issue from the game apparently, so we couldn’t choose the planet we wanted.

Once you’ve landed on a planet, choose which plot of land you think might yield the best mining results. You have a wide choice of terrain.

Each plot of land itself is represented again by cards. There are lots of stats, ratings, and symbols on these cards. Finally you’ll be asked to choose a tool. The default tool is a shovel. Now you can start mining Trilium!

Alien Worlds Gameplay

Alien Worlds, despite its amazing graphics before actually starting the game, has no gameplay. That’s right—there is no gameplay whatsoever. No characters to move around, no shooting or dodging weapons. It is purely a click-mining game. The following image shows actual gameplay over the course of a quarter of an hour. It also shows how there might be another technical issue, as the Trilium we mined never updated in the counter.

The developers described Alien Worlds as a free-to-play game, but to enter the game, you have to have a WAX wallet. To get that, you need to buy 5 WAXP. While that will only set you back a mere 20 cents in dollars or euros, it’s simply not true to say that it’s free to play. The default shovel all new players are given also yields incredibly minimal results.

This is when it becomes obvious that yes, this is an investment game. You’ll have to invest considerable money, and time, to profit from playing Alien Worlds. The shovel has a recharge time of a little over a minute, meaning you’re just sitting there, waiting. You click on “Mine”, a second later click on “Submit mine”, then a window pops up where you have to approve the transaction, then you discover that you’ve earned a percentage of a percentage of one unit of Trilium.

Not to sound too pessimistic here, but if you’re expecting an exciting, action-packed game, Alien Worlds just ain’t it. It looks attractive, but when you click on various buttons for help or info, you’re shown a Google Docs spreadsheet. This seems inconsistently cheap, considering how much effort has gone into making the backstory, trailer, and graphics.

We should also mention that if you’re playing the mobile version, there are quite a few pop-ups that can easily divert your attention from the game itself. Each transaction opens a new tab on your phone browser, and then you have to navigate back to the original game tab. This could be simplified somehow.

Lots of gamers do like Alien Worlds, however. You can upgrade and combine your NFT game cards, which is called “shining”. Invest in more powerful and useful tools than a simple shovel, and use three tools at once. Some of the more expensive tools have a charging time of a couple days, though.

The entire game is about click-mining for Trilium, using that “TLM” to upgrade and purchase NFT tools that can be used in turn to upgrade and purchase more NFT tools. You can also go on missions, and participate in planetary elections, but these “staking” events yield rewards equivalent to the amount you have staked, or invested. Again, no actual gameplay.

One aspect of the game we didn’t care for was the need to defend your land from marauders (other players). You could actually lose what you’ve worked for so long to gain, unless you’ve invested heavily in defense.

Alien Worlds itself ends when you choose to cash out. Yes, it is possible to make lots of money in this game, which is undoubtedly why it is so popular. But do all these avid players actually enjoy playing? The game itself is less of a digital game and more of an online slot machine casino.

Alien Worlds Conclusion

For someone expecting an action game, the year 2055 might really be upon us before you’d find that action in Alien Worlds. To compare how “unimaginably distant” that future is, 1988 is just as far back in the past. Nitpicking aside, we loved the story. It would make a great movie, TV show, or heaven forbid an actual video game.

Despite the seemingly extreme difficulty in starting to play Alien Worlds, if you have an addictive personality and like stock trading, this game is unquestionably for you! If you’re a gamer though and you enjoy a more hybrid nature of crypto and action, then there are plenty of other Web3 games that would be better space-suited for your tastes.