‘Nyan Heroes’ Demo Launches on Epic Games Store—How Solana Airdrop Rewards Work

Nyan Heroes, a cat-themed hero shooter with blockchain assets on Solana, has launched its early access playtest on PC via the Epic Games Store.

The “pre-alpha demo,” as developer 9 Lives Interactive described it, will be available for anyone to download and play until April 9. It offers players the ability to earn MEOW points, which will enable them to receive a share of the upcoming NYAN token airdrop on Solana.

Nyan Heroes, which 9 Lives Interactive Creative Director and CEO Max Fu described to Decrypt’s GG as a hybrid of shooters like Overwatch and Titanfall, lets players take control of dynamic mech suits piloted by adorable cats and lets them earn crypto rewards in the process.

9 Live Interactive kicked off the play-to-airdrop campaign earlier this month ahead of the early access game launch, letting players earn MEOW points through social media engagement and by owning the game’s NFTs minted on Solana.

Now that the demo is live on the Epic Games Store, players can log in and earn more MEOW points simply by playing the shooter and completing in-game missions. These missions include getting your first win of the day, healing 2,500 HP to teammates, or logging 20 hours of play. They’re split into daily, weekly, and “event” tasks to complete.

“Players will be rewarded for engaging with each of those missions,” Fu told Decrypt and they’re all different—so it’s things like headshots, but we also have some pretty unique missions like: How much time have you spent wall running? How much time have you been airborne? How many little cat pilots have you killed? Things like that.”

Ultimately, after the play-to-airdrop campaign ends, the studio plans to launch the token and airdrop it to players based on their MEOW points earned throughout the campaign.

“That will all contribute to various missions, and then we also have a leaderboard within our game that ranks players based on wins, win/loss ratio, and KDA [(kills, deaths, and assists ratio)],” Fu added. “We’ll also be giving rewards to people who place highly on each of those respective leaderboards.”

What you won’t find in the game during the early access period are NFT integrations or any references to the upcoming gaming token. Nyan Heroes is attempting an approach that puts the game above all and targets a broader gaming audience while still integrating player-owned assets as NFTs—letting players “opt in” if they’re interested.

Nyan Heroes can be played entirely without touching crypto or having a wallet, he explained. It will have its own in-game premium currency for buying “Web2” items if players choose. But there will be special items marked as “awakened” that are tokenized and can be traded, and players can engage with those and buy them if they please.

“If you don’t want anything to do with Web3, you don’t ever have to—that’s totally fine, and we’re not creating wallets on the back end for you or anything like that,” Fu explained. “You play the game, and it’s just a traditional game. We have our Web3 component that’s sat on top of that game loop, which is an opt-in if people are interested.”

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.