Blockchain Game: What It Is, How It Works, and Which Ones Actually Matter
When you hear blockchain game, a video game built on a blockchain where players own in-game assets as tokens or NFTs. Also known as crypto game, it combines gaming with real financial incentives—but most of them fail fast. Unlike regular games where your character skin or sword stays locked inside the app, a blockchain game gives you actual digital ownership. You can trade, sell, or even move those items to another game—if the game’s still alive.
But here’s the catch: play-to-earn, a model where players earn cryptocurrency by playing. Also known as P2E, it sounded like free money at first—until most projects ran out of cash, burned through their token supply, or vanished entirely. Take Avaxtars Token (AVXT). It’s only useful inside its own browser game on Avalanche. No exchange listings. No real trading volume. If you stop playing, the token loses all value. That’s not investing. That’s renting a digital toy.
NFT game, a type of blockchain game where in-game items are non-fungible tokens. Also known as crypto collectibles, they promise rarity and resale—but too often, those "rare" swords or pets are just low-effort images with no utility. XPLA used to be a blockchain built for gaming. Now it’s rebranded as CONX, trying to tokenize art and music. Its price dropped 98%. Why? Because no one was actually using it. The same goes for IslandSwap and NinjaSwap—both were marketed as exchanges but had no users, no liquidity, and no team. If a blockchain game’s economy relies on new players buying in to pay old players, it’s a Ponzi with better graphics.
Real blockchain games need three things: a reason to play beyond earning, a working economy that doesn’t collapse, and a team that shows up. Avaxtars at least has a game. NFTLaunch is building an IDO model tied to NFT access—not just throwing tokens at players. Even then, most of these projects are still experimental. The ones that survive will be the ones where the game comes first, and the crypto is just the reward—not the whole point.
What you’ll find below aren’t hype pieces. These are real reviews of blockchain games, tokens tied to them, and the exchanges or wallets you might need. Some are dead. Some are barely alive. A few might still be worth your time—if you know what to look for.