To understand the game I’m going to talk about, first we need to look at CryptoKitties.
Like some bizarre trading card game (except online and on blockchain), players can buy and sell said CryptoKitties, some rarer than others. Where does blockchain come in? The technology is used to authenticate ownership of a particular CryptoKittie character.
That sounds fairly simple, except that within 4 months of launching, CryptoKitties had seen a reported 1 million players making USD40 million in transactions. There are CryptoKitties that were sold for over USD170,000.
That’s a lot of people spending a lot of money on non-existent cats.
Enter CryptantCrab, a PvP-centric game that revolves around building the perfect crab-killing crab.
Like CryptoKitties, blockchain also plays an important part in the game. The crabs that you hatch come with their very own token which is unique to the crab. The crabs can also mutate and grow.
When they do, the upgrades will then be updated on the token, which can be traced through the blockchain, preventing shady hijinks.
Blockchain games have that added security, with most of it being traceable. Unlike traditional games that can be tweaked via code or modded, it is a relatively safe way to ensure that things stay just how the developer intended.
I had an opportunity to launch my own crab empire, and it started with Krabby.
1. Introducing Krabby
Krabby is my very own blockchain-infused crab. He’s not named after the Pokémon; instead, Spongebob Squarepants’ very own Mr. Krabs is his namesake.
Krabby was hatched with a Metal Shell, Water Legs, A Spirit Left Claw and an Earth Right Claw. When crabs are hatched in the game, they come with randomised body parts, making them fairly unique.
I thought it was apt to call him Krabby as coins are made of metal and Mr. Krabs is all about that ka-ching.
With his current stats, he would be decimated in battle in an instant. There are a few ways to improve a crab’s stats. One of them is by Mutating a body part. To mutate a body part, you will need a Cryptant and that can be bought in the Shop. And to use Cryptant, you need ETH to power the transactions.
A simple translation: you do need to spend cryptocurrency in order to mutate your crabs.
2. Mutating/Xenografting Your Crabs
Once you’ve gotten hold of a Cryptant, simply click Mutate on a part you want to mutate, and voila! The part is transformed into something new, possibly stronger or even a legendary body part with added abilities to help in battle.
I then hatch another egg and got my hands on a crab with Metal Legs, and that’s just perfect for Krabby!
If I wanted, I could use Xenograft to remove the legs on the new crab and paste it onto Krabby. While it sounds terrible for the new crab, it will not be rendered useless. A Xenografted crab will then turn into a Fossil, which can then be added to battles to boost the abilities of your other crabs. Its sacrifice will not be in vain.
In the Arena, you can set-up a few teams with different combinations of crabs and fossils. A team can have up to two crabs and each crab can have up to two fossils equipped.
Since I decided not to sacrifice the new crab, I sent Krabby and another crab into battle (and you can do that for free).
When you are confident of your crab’s abilities, you can even pit your crab against other crabs in a PvP (but we rather call it CvC for Crab-versus-Crab) battle in the Battle Arena. The scores are then recorded and uploaded to the Leaderboard which can net you over 10 ETH worth of prizes.
(For context: At the time of writing, 10 ETH is currently worth about RM11,149.)
A tab that caught my eye was the Marketplace, a place where crab enthusiasts like myself gather to sell or buy crabs and fossils. As expected, there were oodles of crabs to choose from.
If you are not fond of Lady Luck (like me) with mutations, then this might be the next logical step for you to improve your crab.
And if you raise a crab right, it could even be sold for ETH.
3. Xplore-ing The People Behind The Game
Reaching out to the developers of CryptantCrab was not a difficult task. Appxplore (iCandy) is located in Malaysia and this just makes things much easier.
They’re the team behind Alien Hive and Mobfish Hunter.
CryptantCrab was one of the first blockchain games in the region. While the bulk of their players are overseas, they have seen an increase in interest from Malaysian gamers that have invested into cryptocurrencies and were trying to turn their investment into something that they can toy around with.
The team acknowledged that they were inspired by CryptoKitties. But they wanted to offer the players more compared to other blockchain games that just gives their players the ability to collect pets/monsters.
To promote the game to general audiences, Appxplore (iCandy) said that they are in the midst of planning some giveaway campaigns with new partners in the Crypto community.
They have also mentioned that they will support and improve CryptantCrab to the fullest, but they are not discounting the possibility of turning existing IPs into blockchain games.
With a background in game design, venturing into a blockchain-based game was not a difficult task for the company. But they spent over a year purely studying and researching about blockchain.
When prodded about the hype surrounding cryptocurrencies, they said:
“The reduced hype has certainly seen the entire Crypto community take a less rabid approach to anything new released in the space. However, this opens up the opportunity to get serious players really invested in the game.”
With more serious players in the game, it will build a stronger bond and trust within the game’s community.
While the game would be a hurdle for someone without much knowledge or investment into the crypto market, the game is fairly easy to pick up, but not a simple task when you want to min/max your crab’s abilities.
For the people with some investment in cryptocurrency and wish to take on a more “hands-on” approach, you should give this a go. As for the newbs out there, I hope this game could be your introduction to blockchain games or cryptocurrency.
Before publishing this piece, I managed to get the results back from Krabby & Co’s first battle. It was sad to see that Krabby lost but it was something that I anticipated anyway. But hey, on the bright side, he did get some experience.
CryptantCrab is a fairly easy game to navigate and with proper investment in terms of crypto and time, the crabs can be easily improved, levelled, mutated and then sold. I shall leave you with this song that managed to hook its claws into my head.
