Card-based crypto games, where players primarily collect and battle with NFT cards, gained widespread exposure from Axie Infinity, one the largest and most successful GameFi projects to date, with a top market cap of $10.2 billion on November 7, 2021.

Compared to other GameFi genres, like virtual-world metaverses (The Sandbox, Decentraland) and builder games (DeFi Kingdoms, My Neighbor Alice), card-based games test the strength and luck of the player. Lucky or not, directly affects how well cards are drawn. This brings more excitement and surprise to the players.

Based on Footprint Analytics data about NFT card games, we have found the 3 most popular ones, measured by followers of social media, such as Twitter, discord, etc.: Splinterlands, Alien Worlds, and The Crypto You.

Splinterlands

What is Splinterlands

Splinterlands was launched in 2018 by Matthew Rosen(Ryzing’s former lead developer) and Jesse Reich(Badische Anilin-und-Soda-Fabrik, BASF’s former employees). The game launched on the Hive chain and closed a $3.6 million funding round in July 2021.

Splinterlands has two types of tokens. One is SPS, a governance token on BSC, and DEC, Dark Energy Crystals, the circulating currency of Splinterlands used to buy in-game assets.

How to play Splinterlands

Splinterlands gamers can buy and collect their cards (NFTs) and make different combinations to play with others. The gameplay is similar to Hearthstone.

To start, users have to spend $10 to purchase a Spellbook to evoke a Summoner. Each Spellbook is an NFT with a unique number.

After invoking a Summoner, players can do 4 things：

Complete daily tasks to earn season rewards. Each season lasts approximately 14 days.

Earn rewards by playing against, or through trials, or by participating in tournaments.

Complete basic missions and wait for airdrops (governing token SPS).

Earn income by renting out NFTs, lands, and equipment.

Battles are played with 6 monster cards and 1 summoner card per turn. As a reward, players receive cards and DECs if they win the game.

Stats about Splinterlands

Token Price

DEC and SPS have risen and fallen roughly the same in the last year. The highest prices were around October 14. Since then, they have started to fall, recovered but then fell again. Overall, they have been affected by larger market trends.

Transactions

Splinterlands’ transactions are in a steady upward trend overall, which is in line with a solid project development path. It is the game with the highest number of GameFi transactions in the past year on the Hive chain, with 98.97%.

Looking at the number of transactions over the past year, the first half of the year was relatively average overall but saw a huge 900% increase in August. One of the reasons for this is the growth brought about by the explosive interest in GameFi and a favorable industry.

Users

As of March 20, Splinterlands had 10 million users—the highest for all card games, and 14.7x of Axie Infinity. The major increase is consistent with the change in transactions, both of which began in August. It is now growing at a relatively steady pace.

Alien Worlds

What is Alien Worlds

Alien Worlds is a metaverse interstellar game created by Dacoco GmbH in 2020. Published on the WAX and BSC chains, it supports cross-chain bridging to Ethereum and was the first game to introduce liquidity mining into NFT games.

Its token is Trillium (TLM), an ERC-20 token that can be obtained by mining and pledged for rewards. Holding TLM allows you to participate in the governance of a planetary DAO, and is also the circulating currency for purchasing upgrade assets.

How to play

Players can explore six planets on Alien Worlds. Each planet is a DAO, choose their character and the planet, and perform liquidity mining to get TLM and NFT assets. Or participate in battles to win rewards.

There are three main types of gameplay.

Mining Hub. Players participate in liquidity mining to earn TLM and NFT assets.

Missions. Players buy ships and send them on missi...