Crypto Games Roundup: Week 2 of March 2023

Despite all the turmoil in banking, the week has seen growth in crypto gaming. The top 5 crypto games grew their paying customer base. Yuga Labs auctioned NFTs for a staggering amount. We also saw strong partnerships being formed on several occasions between established names. The Sandbox continues to be one of the cultural go-to's for different play-and-earn events. This is a run-down of this week's news in case you missed any of it.

Yuga Labs TwelveFold NFT Collection Brings in $16.49M

Yuga Labs, the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, recently hosted its debut NFT collection auction. The new collection was called TwelveFold, and it ended with 288 successful bidders each nabbing a piece of the limited series. All in all they spent a combined $16.49 million worth of BTC. TwelveFold features 300 generative art pieces inscribed to the Bitcoin blockchain via Ordinals, a recently launched method of committing art to Bitcoin.

Mutant Apes in The Glimmering Dungeons and Dragons Game

Gripnr, a Web3 startup, is aiming to bridge the gap between DnD and Web3 components using NFT-based characters. Their first game is The Glimmering, which raised $2.5 million in 2022. Now the company has announced a partnership with NFT collector and Web3 entrepreneur Jimmy "j1mmy" McNelis. The deal will see McNelis' owned Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFT characters integrated as villains into Gripnr's new game, The Glimmering.

Guild of Guardians Gets Help From Mineloader

Immutable Games Studio, the developer of Gods Unchained, has announced a partnership with Mineloader development studio. Their aim is to deliver the highly anticipated Web3 RPG Guild of Guardians. The game has already generated a lot of buzz, with more than one million players pre-registering for the game. Furthermore, eight of the world's largest esports teams have already partnered up with them, including FNATIC and Team Liquid.

The Sandbox March Festival Rewards 1M in $SAND

The Sandbox is making headlines again, this time with its March Festival. Following the success of last month’s festivities, which saw the reward pool soar to 500k in $SAND tokens, the platform is now offering even more quests, prizes and activities for gamers.

Outer Ring MMO Sees $1.5M investment

Maniac Panda Games has invested $1.5 million in Outer Ring MMO, a free-to-play crypto game that offers play-to-earn opportunities. Outer Ring MMO is a science-fiction game set in a persistent open world with extensive lore. It features massive battles, mini-games, interactive metaverse experiences, and esports tournaments. The early access pre-alpha will launch on the BNB Chain in June of this year.

Weekly top players by game

Here's a look at this week's most successful crypto games according to DappRadar. 
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* The number of players refers to UAW, or Unique Active Wallets. This means the number of in-game players with an active wallet that is used for transactions. This doesn't take into account players who don't use or haven't used their wallets in-game.

Game spotlight of the week: Arc8

Our game spotlight of the week is none other than Arc8, which is a platform for games. These aren't just random games, however—they're modern versions of classic games with a twist. Pirate-themed solitaire, the ever-fun 2048 but combined with a shooting gallery and coin-pusher, and a new modern version of Tetris, just to name a few.

Play Arc8 to earn in-game tokens for free that you can exchange for real money in your crypto wallet. You can easily lose yourself in most of the 13 games on this platform, it's a lot of fun!