Supercell’s Investment, Saga Airdrop, ‘Parallel’ Adds Expansion

The crypto and NFT gaming space is busier than ever lately, what with prominent games starting to release, token airdrops piling up, and a seemingly constant array of other things happening at all times. It’s a lot to take in!

Luckily, Decrypt’s GG is all over it. And if you need a quick way to get caught up on the latest moves around crypto video games, we’re happy to present This Week in Crypto Games.

Our weekend roundup serves up the biggest news from the past week, along with a few other tidbits you might have missed. We also showcase a few of our original stories from the week.

Biggest news

Saga airdrop nears: Layer-1 network Saga kicked off its next airdrop campaign last week. The “Power-Level Over 9,000” campaign—which was named after a “Dragon Ball Z” anime reference that became an internet meme—is now underway. And $10 million worth of SAGA is coming in the first wave.

After taking a snapshot on April 26, any users who staked more than 101 SAGA ($340 worth) or anyone who staked at least 95% of their SAGA genesis airdrop from last month, will share the rewards. When these tokens will hit wallets is unknown, though the network’s team added that a claims page will be opened for roughly one week ahead of the distribution.

Supercell investment: Mobile giant Supercell, the company behind the smash games Clash of Clans and Clash Royale, invested in crypto gaming startup Games for a Living. Supercell was part of a wider $3.2 million seed funding round for the Web3 gaming startup co-founded by Trip Hawkins, the original founder and CEO of video game titan Electronic Arts (EA).

Parallel’s expansion: Popular Web3 trading card game Parallel released its first in-game expansion Planetfall last week. Launched in the game following last fall’s NFT sale, Planetfall adds “hundreds” of new card combinations according to the developer, giving the game more strategic possibilities as it expands to a wider audience following the recent open beta launch.

Nyan Heroes returns: Solana-based first-person shooter Nyan Heroes is about to return after a few weeks offline, as servers for the pre-alpha demo will go online on Wednesday, May 8. Following the first play period in late March and early April, Nyan Heroes is coming back with a new ranked mode, along with the second season of the play-to-airdrop rewards campaign.

ICYMI

• Avalanche NFT basketball game, Rumble Kong League, secured Gatorade as the official sports drink partner of the brand.
• Solana GameShift added Google Cloud Integration, which will help developers more easily deploy blockchain games, which they hope will drive mainstream adoption.
• AnimeCoin Foundation launched a web-based game called Gacha Grab, a virtual slot machine inspired by Japanese gachapon toy vending machines.
• There’s a new Rabbids game on The Sandbox from Ubisoft, which is randomly called Music vs. Love. The Rabbids were always a bit odd, we suppose…

• NFT startup Holograph has raised $3 million in fresh funding as it pushes harder into on-chain gaming assets that can be used across numerous chains.
• Some poster on Reddit created a “Black Mirror-style” game with hidden seed words throughout it.
• A Pudgy Penguins-themed physical trading card game is in the works with a launch date set for Q4 2024.

GG spotlight

Here are a few of our original stories from this past week that we think are well worth a weekend read:

Edited by Andrew Hayward