The NFT play-to-earn industry might be in its infancy, but it’s already obvious it’s going to be a giant in the entertainment space. Many of the games that are already on the market look like something made in the late 90s or early 2000s, yet the player base keeps growing. Many may not even offer much in terms of gameplay besides clicking buttons. However, what they lack in playability, they make up for in terms of earnings.
3 Profitable NFT Games You Can Earn Money With Today
In many third-world countries, the daily profits you can make from playing NFT games are higher than the average salary. This is one of the reasons for the mass adoption of play-to-earn games. The second is the current NFT craze in the crypto space, where money is thrown at anything. Still, play-to-earn games are here to stay and they can be very profitable, especially if you enter early on.
I want to focus today on lower market cap projects, that not everyone has heard of, so we won’t mention popular titles like Axie Infinity, Alien Worlds, or CryptoBlades.
Before we begin, please understand that all the projects we’ll present here carry risks and should not be treated as investment advice. A good way to approach this kind of title is to start very small and see where that takes you. Even if you get your money back relatively quickly, follow up gradually, don’t just ape in with all your savings. These kinds of projects can be profitable today and lose you money tomorrow, just like it happened with CryptoBlades. With that aside, let’s begin.
1. PolkaMonster
PolkaMonster is another play to earn monster collection game on the Binance Smart Chain, this time inspired by Pokemon Go.
You can mint your Polka Monster by buying and opening elemental eggs or you can buy them directly at the marketplace. They start at level one and come in different rarities. By doing tasks, your Polka will accumulate experience and evolve to level up. Mature monsters, from level 3 and up, can farm, which allows players to earn more tokens and collect NFT items.
Polka Monster has two tokens: $PKM and $PKK. The game started with only PKMon, but this token was soon exhausted. Most purchases and maintenance are paid in PKM while players earn rewards in PKK.
The play-to-earn part involves players using their Polkas to fight Org monsters. If you win the battle, you are then rewarded with the PKK token and gain experience points. Monsters with higher rarity will gain more experience. The win rate and reward levels are calculated based on the rarity and level of the Polka Monster. The rarity level also determines the maximum number of fights per day.
The play-to-earn activities are divided into:
Daily fights: you fight with your monsters to earn PKK, the main play-to-earn activity.
Farming: you can place your Polka Monsters on the farm to participate in farming and get back PKM as a farm reward. Rare and high-level Monsters will receive a higher number of tokens from farming.
PVP Challenge: players can compete against each other to practice and earn more PKM from their opponents as well as receive ranking rewards.
Raids/Team combat: there is a plan to have raid events against the entire Org corps held weekly.
PolkaMonster is a simple game. It’s still profitable and, unlike some other games on this list, its tokens are not losing value over time.
Current PolkaMonster ROI – 2 weeks to 3 months, depending on your fight outcomes and the rarity of the minted/bought creature.
2. Plant vs Undead
Plant vs Undead (PVU) is a play-to-earn tower defense game on the Binance Smart Chain, where your plants are your real asset. The game is inspired by Plants vs Zombies, with the addition of new blockchain technology and NFTs. In a nutshell, PVU is a tower defense game in a farming simulation skin.
What’s different from the other games is that you can start to play it for free – no initial investment is needed.
Each plant is unique in PVU and accessible through growing Seeds. Each plant can be bought and sold at the marketplace. Free-to-play players, or gardeners, can play play and earn NFTs with real value.
While slightly more complicated than the other games on this list, it’s easy to start playing. Free to play players get 1 mother tree and 6 basic plants. These starting plants are not NFTs but are usable in all game modes. The in-game token, PVU, can be earned and used to buy seeds/plants on the marketplace.
There are several game modes:
- Each round, a player is allowed to bring one mother tree and up to eight unique plants;
- Plants' positions on the land are important as it provides synergy. For example, 3 adjacent fire plants give ignite to the plants’ attack. The same goes for other elements;
- Killing Undead gives energy, which can be used to upgrade or relocate the plants.
Current Plant vs Undead – 1 day to 3 months, depending on your entry into the game. As it is free to play, you can practically start earning from day 1. However, as with the other games, this game won’t be as profitable in the future as it was at the beginning of the project.
Buying plants is expensive, as the game is currently implementing farming 2.5, which changes the rules of the game and adds additional value to owning plant NFTs. We bought one plant NTF for around $1200, and are expecting a ROI of 40 days, but I am not sure that ROI will be sustainable in the future.
However, I do think that the game will stay profitable soon. The ROI might increase, but I do not see a scenario where they kill their economy, like CryptoBlades, or CryptoDrakeBall.
The team is working on various game modes. They quickly discover which parts of the game are abused and change them accordingly.
3. CryptoDrakeBall
CryptoDrakeBall is a familiar-looking (ahem) play to earn NFT card game, also on the Binance Smart Chain platform. The game revolves around using characters to train them to enter the Arena and earn DBALL tokens. NFTs may be freely traded on the marketplace for DBALL tokens, which can then be traded on exchanges or converted to fiat currency.
Options are available for the player to earn:
- Participating in Arena fights with the characters you own and winning DBALL;
- Capsuling characters or selling them on the marketplace;
Each character starts at level one and comes with one of six different rarity levels upon capsuling. Characters with higher rarity will have higher rewards paid when fighting in the Arena. Each character has stamina which is 4 times the fighting maximum. One fight turn cooldown is three hours and a single character can fight 8 times per day.
With experience gained in the Arena, your character increases levels. The rarity as well as the level of the character will determine the DBALL rewards for Arena victories. Fights are on-chain transactions that take the power values of the chosen character and chosen enemy and compare the calculated rolls to determine if the player wins or loses.
Combat consists of the player choosing a character and selecting enemies from a random group based on their power. After the player has chosen their enemy, the contract calculates their odds of winning against the opponent. There are four options for choosing enemies with different win rates and rewards:
Option 1: 80% win rate
Option 2: 70% win rate
Option 3: 60% win rate
Option 4: 20% win rate
If you go to their website, you’ll notice that it's not immediately clear how you can mint characters. First, you’ll have to buy some DBALL from PancakeSwap, then connect your wallet to the CryptoDrakeBall app. Go to the Arena and there you can buy a capsule. After buying a capsule you can throw the capsule and that mints you a character.
While the game was very profitable for a few weeks, the rewards have been cut significantly, which together with the falling price of DBALL means that gas fees are higher than the rewards, much like CryptoBlades. There is NO incentive at the moment to play CryptoDrakeBall. Unfortunately, it is another victim of bad economic planning, low token utility, and mass dumping of the token rewards by players. A clear reminder of the current volatility of this space. Players who got in early took profits, while those who joined later are in the red.
