More Telegram Games Launching TON Tokens, Parallel Hits Epic Games

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

More Telegram games on TON: As Telegram-based games Notcoin and Hamster Kombat take over the world of crypto gaming, two new challengers enter the chat. Tapswap and Yescoin are two simple games playable via mini apps on the Telegram messaging platform, and now both have plans to launch tokens on The Open Network (TON). And yes, before you ask, they both either replicate or riff on the clicker concept.

Tapswap—which claims some 50 million players—previously offered Solana wallet integration, but said Thursday that it will ultimately launch on TON instead. Yescoin, which sees a slight variation on the clicker genre where you swipe rather than tap, also announced that it will be releasing a token on TON, after attracting 18 million users in little over a month.

Parallel on Epic: Competitive card game Parallel is now in front of a monthly audience of 75 million active users after launching on the Epic Games Store. GG’s 2023 Game of the Year was launched on the prominent PC gaming marketplace last week after entering open beta earlier this year.

The competitive trading card game is built around NFTs minted on Ethereum and layer-2 scaling network Base, although it also features non-tokenized in-game cards. Players who download the free-to-play game on the Epic Games Store can unlock five additional “Apparition Packs” with the non-NFT cards.

Gaming tokens down bad: While the crypto market bleeds, the gaming segment has suffered some of the worst casualties over the last week. Gaming tokens tend to be highly volatile, like meme coins, due in part to the crypto gaming market still being relatively nascent. And last week, top tokens tied to gaming projects took some of the biggest hits of all, with notable projects like Guild of Guardians (GOG), Parallel (PRIME), and Xai (XAI) seeing sizable price drops.

ICYMI

• The Open Network’s TON hit an all-time high of $8.25 late Friday as Notcoin’s NOT token stays in demand while Hamster Kombat’s token is coming soon.
• Speaking of which, Notcoin’s airdrop claim for early players ends today!
• Oh, and Hamster Kombat said Friday that it now has 150 million players ahead of the token launch.
• Digital avatar startup Ready Player Me is bringing avatars into Ubisoft’s Just Dance VR. However, it’s unclear whether NFTs will be included, and Ubisoft and RPM have yet to confirm either way.

• High-seas adventure RPG Pirate Nation launched its PIRATE token on Ethereum last week, and it’s trading on Coinbase.
• Hamster Kombat might be teasing a pre-market trading feature ahead of its planned token launch in July. The game added a special Pre-Market Trading card in the exchange CEO simulation game, but it’s not clear yet whether the actual feature will follow.
• Uniswap Labs acquired Crypto: The Game ahead of its third season.
• Another Telegram game, Catizen, said last week that it hit 15 million players.

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