Solana Game ‘Nyan Heroes’ Returning With Expanded Play-to-Airdrop Rewards

Following its initial pre-alpha demo playtest in late March and early April, Overwatch-esque hero shooter Nyan Heroes will bring its online servers back online next week amid a renewed play-to-airdrop push for the Epic Games Store PC title.

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Nyan Heroes is a team-based shooter with NFT assets and an upcoming token on the Solana blockchain. Its servers will relaunch beginning May 8, and the second pre-alpha demo playtest period will include a new ranked mode for players.

9 Lives Interactive Creative Director and CEO Max Fu told Decrypt that the playtest period is currently slated to last until May 26, though it’s possible that the studio will extend that window.

Ahead of the pre-alpha revival, Nyan Heroes has launched the second season of its play-to-airdrop campaign, which will expand the kinds of rewards that players can accumulate—and will translate into an allocation for the game’s eventual NYAN token airdrop on Solana.

CATNIP is a rare & valuable item that is difficult to come by. It will be harder to obtain compared to MEOWs😼

With a higher barrier of entry, the pool of rewards stands to be greater for those who manage to grab some🪂

Here’s how you can get your paws on it! 🐾 pic.twitter.com/dSUAvYE7kT

— Nyan Heroes (@nyanheroes) May 1, 2024

Previously, players could earn in-game MEOW points for completing an array of rotating in-game quests, which included tasks like playing a certain number of matches, notching a particular number of enemy kills, and so on.

In season two, the play-to-airdrop campaign will also add CATNIP points, which rewards for gameplay performance and add a multiplier to players’ airdrop allocations. CATNIP will exist alongside MEOW, and remain in the game during future seasons as well.

Players were already able to earn CATNIP during the first season of gameplay, but the rewards functionality was not yet enabled. Those earned points will be carried over into the second season and they will factor into airdrop allocations.

CATNIP can also be earned outside the game for social media engagement via Nyan Heroes’ play-to-airdrop dashboard.

Nyan Heroes has racked up more than 200,000 downloads to date on the Epic Games Store, according to the studio, and hit a peak of more than 45,000 daily active users during the initial pre-alpha playtest window. The studio says that 20% of users were “Web2 players,” based on its data, suggesting mainstream crossover with the Epic Games Store’s traditional gamer base.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.