One year on from Yuga Labs’ typically irreverent Dookey Dash game comes news of the sequel.
Unlike the NFT-gated original, Dookey Dash Unclogged will be a full gaming experience with battle pass and IAPs, and open for anyone to play, although Yuga Labs NFT holders — Apes, Mutants, Kodas, HV-MTL etc — will get access to additional benefits.
Organised around weekly and seasonal events, players will be able to win boosts, golden plungers (!) and NFT invites to big prize tournaments. Rewards will include Apecoin and Yuga NFTs.
Launch is set for sometime during Q1 2024 with the game available for PC/Mac and mobile via app store downloads, not as previously on browser, which limited the quality of the experience imho.
Perhaps more significant, however, is Yuga’s collaboration with Faraway Games, which will see the latter’s UGC platform leveraged into the experience. This means creators will be able to make their own 3D characters — Faraway supports the Ready Player Me standard — as well as vehicles and stickers.
They will then be able to sell these within the Faraway Shop for use in Dookey Dash Unclogged, as well as other games and experiences that support the tech, including Yuga’s Legends of the Mara and Faraway’s Mini Royale and Serum City games.
Indeed, the shop also enables people to create their own storefronts, which can be used to sell items other users have created, gaining the store owner up to 40% of the overall sale price. 5% of any purchase is also available to claim via referral code.
Hence Yuga says content creators, content curators and influencers will all be able to earn additional rewards.
And it’s this combination of a simple game available to the massmarket through traditional distribution channels without any crypto complexity, together with UGC and blockchain hooks for those who want to go deeper that should provide Dookey Dash Unclogged with its opportunity to appeal to both type of audiences in a highly synergetic manner.
Or as Yuga co-founder Greg Solano puts it “…Yuga into a million people’s pockets”.
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Calendar
Nifty Island starts its play-to-airdrop — 17th January
AOC tokens migrating to Ronin — 22nd January
Let’s meet at Pocket Gamer Connects London 2024 — 23nd January
MetaBrew’s Gamers Brew Uniqs launch on Ultra — 24th January
Yuga Labs next demo for Otherside metaverse — TBC February
Nyan Heroes’ play-to-airdrop event — TBC February
Funding news
File it under “interesting/odd?”: blockchain-as-a-service monetization platform 3thix has announced a $8.5 million funding round. Founded by “Forbes 30-under-30 nominee” Timothy Tello — previously of Pocketful of Quarters — the funding was led by Xsolla founder Shurick Agapitov’s family office (Hand of Midas) and the family office of Algorand’s former CEO Steve Kokinos (Sonic Boom Ventures).
As part of the deal 3thix will work with Algorand to build out its platform, also becoming integrated within Xsolla. Rather ambitiously, it hopes its decentralized approach to building an IDFA system will fix one of the key issues in mobile gaming UA. Good luck!
This isn’t the first time Xsolla has been interested in blockchain however. It’s integrated its payment system with Crypto.com and tinkered with supporting NFTs. Indeed Agapitov launched X.LA, which was labelled “a community-driven organization to democratize how creators benefits from their work” in 2022, also launching a bunch of NFTs, before being quietly discontinued.
Out Of India news
My Blockchain Gaming World podcast is entering 2024 with the plan of releasing an episode per week. This week’s conversation (#152) is with Kratos Studio founder Manish Agarwal, who’s building out a global community of gamers using blockchain technology.
Starting in India — it acquired the IndiGG DAO, although is dropping that branding — Kratos has over 1 million players and is expanding into Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey, etc.
Neatly, it can plug both web3 and web2 games into its quest system and has already distributed over $1 million of income from publishers to its players. Later in 2024, it’s going to roll out its reputation system, as well as a crypto token which will work alongside its current offchain cash system.
As for BCGW, future episodes should feature Playmint, Mythical Games and Pixels.
Saga Mk 2 news
The rumors were true: Solana has announced pre-orders for its second phone. Labelled “Chapter 2” but significantly not shipping until H1 2025, the device is priced at $450 during the “Founder Window”. The price will rise as we move into the Early Adopter Window and finally the Supporter Window.
Given that long timeline, Solana warns in its FAQ that if Chapter 2 doesn’t meet its pre-order target, the device may not be launched. In that case, all pre-orders would be refunded.
Nyan Heroes’ Play-To-Airdrop news
As is now the way of things, PC-based Solana shooter Nyan Heroes has announced a two-week play-to-airdrop campaign during February. The F2P team-based cat-and-mechs game will be released in early access via Epic Games Store. It can currently be added to your wishlist.
The campaign will see players play to earn an allocation of the as-yet-unreleased NYN tokens with original NFT holders promised “additional rewards”. As well as promoting gameplay, the campaign will also reward social activity with the overall event running into March.
Additional Links
Netmarble’s Marblex blockchain has added support for Aptos via its multi-chain Warp service. This enables Aptos users to access MBX games and NFTs within their own ecosystem. Marblex already also supports Klaytn and BNB.
Foonie Magus’ action god PC game Apeiron is now available to play in demo mode via the Mavis Hub. Previously it was only available by Epic Games Store.
CryptoUndeads completed its NFT drop, with the Solana-based collection now at a floor price of 14 SOL (c.$1,4000).
Sky Mavis has appointed its first CFO. Ellen Gormley was previously CFO at DeFi network Radix and group finance director at blockchain infra provider Bitfury.
Limit Break’s latest tech release is PermitC, a security protocol extending Uniswap’s ERC20 protection to ERC721 and ERC1155 NFTs. It will be included within Limit Break’s ERC721C standard. One key element of PermitC is the ability to set an expiration timestamp for wallet approvals.
$1 million AK-47 skin arrived in Counter-Strike.
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