This Week in Crypto Video games: Hamster Kombat 'HamsterVerse', Telegram Sport Airdrop Updates – Decrypt

The crypto and NFT gaming area is busier than ever these days, what with outstanding video games beginning to launch, token airdrops piling up, and a seemingly fixed array of different issues occurring always. It’s rather a lot to soak up!Fortunately, Decrypt’s GG is throughout it. And when you want a fast approach to get caught up on the most recent strikes round crypto video video games, we’re completely satisfied to current This Week in Crypto Video games.Our weekend roundup serves up the largest information from the previous week-plus—that is an prolonged version as a result of holidays—together with a number of different tidbits you may need missed.Greatest newsHamster Kombat TON layer-2: After the fourth-largest gaming token launch of 2024, the makers of Telegram tap-to-earn sport Hamster Kombat revealed plans to create a layer-2 community on prime of The Open Community (TON).This got here after a decentralized autonomous group (DAO) vote overwhelmingly voted in favor of the transfer, with 1.1 billion HMSTR token voting energy in favor and simply 104,368 in opposition to. Nonetheless, it is value noting that the highest two voters maintain over 88% of all voting energy as of this writing, giving a few whales immense affect.Previous to this, the devs introduced that Hamster Kombat's hotly anticipated (and much-delayed) second season will likely be “greater than only a sport,” with three video games now within the works to grow to be the core of an leisure ecosystem utilizing the IP. Known as HamsterVerse, a closed beta is already underway for 30,000 group members.
📋IT’S CLOSED-BETA TESTING TIME 📋
Excited to announce that we now have chosen 30,000 group customers who will assist us and take part in Closed-Beta Testing of Season 2/HamsterVerse!
All of the invitations have been despatched by way of the Hamster Kombat bot on Telegram.
When you haven’t obtained… pic.twitter.com/X3TqyaTOIR
— Hamster Kombat (@hamster_kombat) December 28, 2024Off the Grid stands tall: As the tip of the 12 months dawned, Avalanche-based shooter Off the Grid raked in some media accolades. Not solely did it win GG’s Sport of the 12 months, however the battle royale shooter additionally gained Gam3s’ Sport of the 12 months award and made it to a Rolling Stone year-end gaming record.Gunzilla Video games shared its 2025 plans with Decrypt alongside the GOTY honors. Most notably, this contains an estimated Q1 2025 date for its GUNZ community to enter mainnet, which might allow its GUN token to be freely traded. Earlier than then, the studio needs to launch ranked and solo queue modes, and open up the remaining 80% of the map whereas kicking off the sport's storyline.After that, Gunzilla will likely be seeking to onboard third-party builders to the GUNZ community, and is even eying a attainable Telegram mini app for the ecosystem. It must be an enormous 12 months for one in all crypto gaming's largest success tales to this point.Illuvium's subsequent steps: Crypto gaming franchise Illuvium introduced how it is going to be transferring ahead within the new 12 months. The mission beforehand launched three titles that fed into one another, each by way of shared sources and a story loop—however specializing in all three titles has been too difficult. Going ahead, the crew will prioritize efforts on one sport at a time, beginning with the auto-battler Illuvium Enviornment.The prolonged weblog submit additionally touches on plans to scale back microtransactions, add extra content material, and lift extra funding. Maybe most importantly, the submit ponders the opportunity of briefly shutting down the flagship title Illuvium Overworld till it's a “absolutely realized expertise.” However coming into 2025, enhancing the Overworld MMO expertise is claimed to be the Illuvium crew’s “prime precedence.”ICYMI
Telegram sport Catizen distributed rewards to airdrop go holders on Friday, which noticed holders obtain three totally different tokens.
Iconic gaming model Atari revealed a brand new handheld console, the “My Arcade.”
Zoo, a surging Telegram sport with over 12 million gamers, confirmed that its mining section will finish on January 31 and that one in-game ZOO token will likely be equal to at least one future on-chain token.
Sonic SVM confirmed that gamers of its TikTok tap-to-earn sport will obtain a SONIC airdrop on the Solana blockchain.

Crypto buying and selling card sport Parallel crossed 6 million video games performed within the historical past of its existence, with builders claiming that it presently averages 200,000 video games per week.
Telegram sport Cat Gold Miner introduced that its token will likely be listed on Bitget, Gate, MEXC, and different exchanges on Thursday, January 9.
Somebody turned the long-lasting first-person shooter Doom right into a CAPTCHA human verification problem.
GG spotlightHere are a number of of our authentic tales from this previous couple weeks that we expect are properly value a weekend learn:Edited by Andrew HaywardGG NewsletterGet the most recent web3 gaming information, hear instantly from gaming studios and influencers masking the area, and obtain power-ups from our companions.