This Week in Crypto Games: CryptoKitties Hit Telegram, ‘X Empire’ Flip-Flop, and ‘Moonray’ Goes Mobile

The crypto 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

CryptoKitties return: Classic Ethereum NFT project CryptoKitties has returned as a Telegram crypto game. This is the first official product launch under the IP since the original 2017 NFT collection. It serves as a “sneak peek” into the collections’ relaunch on Flow.

Telegram gaming exploded in popularity this year, tempting Dapper Labs—the collection’s creator—to jump in on the craze. CryptoKitties: All The Zen tasks you with tapping and rubbing an egg as you upgrade and unlock various in-game cats, and in-game progress will later unlock CryptoKitties-related airdrops on the Flow network with the collection’s relaunch on the horizon.

X Empire ends, then returns: Elon Musk-themed Telegram game X Empire ended its mining phase on Monday, as expected, ahead of its airdrop. This was supposed to be the final step before the token launch, but then the plans changed. The tap-to-earn game launched a new mini-season called the “Chill Phase” for players to fight for more tokens before the airdrop in “the second half of October.”

Rewards earned from the initial mining phase will not be affected as they have already been calculated and allocated. Instead, an additional 5% of the total token supply—another 34.5 billion X tokens—has been assigned to a new rewards campaign set to last only a couple of weeks before the token airdrop.

Moonray auto-battler: The makers of Ethereum action game Moonray have announced a mobile auto-battler set to release in early 2025 to complement its flagship battle arena game. The spinoff game will be set in the same “post-human” world as the original, using the same assets, and will let Moonray token holders unlock special content and rewards.

Also known as “auto chess,” the strategy genre sees gamers place characters on a board, and they’ll automatically fight the opposition. Riot’s Teamfight Tactics is the most popular example, but Moonray’s entry into the genre claims to have “more in-depth resource management and counter play,” as well as Web3 integration.

ICYMI

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