Royston Reviews: CryptoMiningWar

I’ve been playing games for as long as I can remember, but none have been as divisive as idle games. I’ve whiled away many hours in Cookie Clicker, Clicker Heroes, even some of the more fringe idle games one can find browsing the internet (Swarm Simulator was my favorite for some time). They can be a good way to pass the time when you have nothing else to do, to kill time on a trip or while waiting on something, or at the very least, a way to feel as if you’re doing something. Critics will occasionally even hesitate to refer to these as “games” considering that most have little to no actual activity on the part of the player, spare for things like upgrades. As one could expect as the blockchain games industry grows, several have tried to capture the essence of these idle games. CryptoMiningWar is one of the more recognizable variants I’ve seen, and I played it over the course of about a week. Let’s see if it holds up.

CRYPTOMININGWAR

CryptoMiningWar (hererafter referred to as CMW) is an idle game where players compete to have the highest hashrate in game, with some of the in-game ETH fees being used to build up a prize pool that’s shared amongst the top 10 players. Players can also hire engineers to produce viruses, to attack other players or to participate in PVE. If you have the ETH, you can also become the “Game Sponsor,” who receives a share of certain in-game fees, and can only be replaced when someone else pays to become Game Sponsor, and the price increases by 50% with each successive Sponsor.

The game also resets each week, preventing players from keeping a foothold on the top spots (in theory). Only your engineers, viruses, and Redbulls (an item that boosts the rate at which your engineers produce viruses) carry over between weekly leagues.

Things get off to a slow start as new players will not have any miners, engineers, viruses, etc. A series of quests guide you throughout the game, showing you how to progress. You’ll start off buying level one miners, and waiting. Once you have a stable amount of miners, you’ll want to hire some engineers and produce some viruses to protect your Crystals while attempting to steal from other players. The process of producing viruses takes time, so if you’re unlucky (like myself) then several players will target you while you’re defenseless, making progress slow.

What I haven’t mentioned up until this point is that all in-game actions require a fee in ETH. Every time you purchase new miners, hire new engineers, use viruses to attack, or even deposit Crystals into the Crystal Deposit, you’ll pay a fee. While this fee is usually small, these add up over time, and transaction times can become a pain in a game where it’s a race against the clock and resources.

At the end of my playthrough, I was nowhere near the top 10 when it came to the weekly league, especially considering most of those players bought upgrades to their hashrate. I had gained some ETH (~$0.20 worth) from Crystal Deposit and PVE. I simply didn’t have enough money to compete with the top players. The game is heavily skewed towards the players with the most ETH to spend, and even then the game can become almost a sunk cost fallacy, when I’m debating whether the purchases I’m making to increase my chances of winning will end up being more than the money I earn.

The difference between a game like Cookie Clicker and CMW is that in Cookie Clicker, you could play whenever you wanted to. When you left, your cookies were not at risk, and being at the top of the leaderboards only really mattered if that was your thing. The game had no set goal except to keep playing until you felt like quitting. However with CMW, the experience felt more stressful. I found it difficult to find my growth rewarding when all of my attention in the game was devoted to trying to get close enough to the top 10 to have a chance of winning, and even then, only if I bought an Overclock. Since any sort of gain is dependent on your ability to invest more ETH, the players with the most ETH to begin with are the most likely to win. With the Game Sponsor also winning last week’s Weekly League, and the current price to replace that Sponsor being 5.4675 ETH (~$588.74 at time of writing), I don’t see that player’s dominance being replaced any time soon.

CONCLUSION

MINIMUM INVESTMENT: Variable. While you can, in theory, put as much money into this game as you’d like, your only chance of being in the top 10 is by investing as much as possible.

WHAT DOES THIS ADD TO BLOCKCHAIN GAMING?: In short, very little. As much as I hate to put it, this game serves as an example of what not to do when creating a blockchain game; which is to create something your only option is to spend more money. While it’s admirable of the developers to create more methods of earning ETH than buying more miners (such as the Crystal Deposit and PVE), they’re still in favor of players who have the ETH to spend in order to gain the biggest advantages. I don’t think I’ll be returning to CMW, however if there comes a developer that can pull of an idle blockchain game, or if CMW can bring itself to this point, I’d definitely be willing to give it another shot.

RATING: 2/5

Website: https://cryptominingwar.github.io/