The biggest complaint I hear when it comes to Crypto Games is: "Crypto Games need to be games first". Which is something the Pudgy Penguin / Mythical Team actually did, in fact it's difficult to find any relationship to crypto in the game. It seems purposefully obfuscated perhaps in an attempt to not scare away non crypto people from playing.
The Game: Pudgy Party
Race, Survive, play King of the Hill, and Knock other survivors off the map. Start off in a group of 20 and win three rounds of different games to win the match and get rewards to level up your different penguins.
Here's what you should know:
The different penguins have different powers/abilities. The more you play the more you can level up the characters, some penguins specialize more in offense (swinging big club around to knock back other penguins), other penguins specialize in survival by giving you extra jumps, and other penguins specialize in speed and getting through the races faster.
To win a match you have to win three rounds:
- Top 10 of 20 (one game type is Top 15 of 20)
- Top 5 of 10
- Top 1 of 5
But if you don't win that's ok you can back out and try again, there isn't really any ranking system or penalty if you don't win. You just simply don't come in first place.
The Crypto?
For the actual game itself I wasn't able to figure out how crypto was related for the vast majority of the game. But from what I would later figure out it looks like it's mostly acquiring special Penguin character NFTS that you can then sell to other players or keep. Despite having twelve penguins unlocked I only have one penguin NFT which was a legendary penguin that I got by merging together an item and a common penguin.
I'm not sure if there is more crypto in the game beyond the earning, buying and selling of character NFTs but if there was I wasn't able to figure it out.
The actual NFT relationship is complicated and you have to go to another website to create and link an account to your pudgy party account and then manage crypto off of the app through that website. On the Pudgy Party app itself you'd have no idea there was a web 3 connection.
—–
Is it fun?
I was enjoying the gameplay and trying to figure out the connection to web 3. I actually managed to get rank 1 in the world as of now and got to rep our .moon domains in the game.
—–
The Good:
- The Game is incredibly flushed out, there are so many different maps, and game types so you don't get bored playing the same 3 maps over and over.
- It's easy to learn and a tutorial gives you the basic run down of controls
- It's got a lot of "reward" paths and f2p ways to earn rewards. (I'm counting at least 5 on the homepage)
The Bad
- It's not entirely clear what everything does, you've got four different type of "currency" type items that you can earn and it's now clear to me how three of them are used
- The game is completely F2P and has quite a lot to offer but has a p2earn feature in which you can spend money to get the resources to level up your penguins or buy other things in the shop or "fish pass" a premium battle pass type item. (TBH this isn't necessarily bad – but it's not my favorite feature).
—-
Will I be playing it again? Absolutely.
If you want to watch gameplay I've uploaded a video of a match: here
