GM

Welcome to the 13 subs who joined yesterday.

Just another week in the world of NFTs:

 Monday - We’re so back

 Tuesday - It’s all over

 Wednesday - We’re so back ← you are here

 Thursday - It’s all over

 Friday - We’re so back

In today’s edition:

• This NFT game might actually be good

• Updated rankings

• 5 new drops

More info on Mint/Watch lists HERE.

This NFT game might actually be good

Context

Shardbound is an upcoming PC Web3 game by Bazooka Tango launching on both IMX and Polygon (using zkEVM).

This is a free Collectible Card Game combined with turn-based tactics. As the team puts it, it’s Magic the Gathering meets Final Fantasy Tactics.

No mint is announced yet, but you can pre-register to secure your “exclusive playable card to be claimed in the first week of public beta” – which is probably code for an NFT.

Our Take

They say 99% of NFTs fail. You can react to this in three ways:

1. Smirk because you own the 1% (you probably don’t).

2. Yell “No that’s impossible!” Skywalker style to the closest living thing near you.

3. Accept that this is true of most things in the world.

Number 3 is the way. Restaurants, tech startups, amateur athletes – the vast majority of nearly everything fails.

Gaming is no exception

They estimate 64% of all Steam games end up making less than $10,000 in lifetime revenue, well below the dev costs and time spent making them.

And this is for the games that actually make it to release, there’s another long list of titles that die in production every year.

One of those was a game called Shardbound.

This one was pretty hyped up, presented at TwitchCon, and had pre-alpha gameplay videos with ~90k views back in 2016. However, due to financial reasons, it just didn’t make it to the finish line.

But now Shardbound is back, and it’s going to have NFTs

Here’s what we know:

• Shardbound was acquired recently by Bazooka Tango

• Bazooka Tango was launched by the guys behind Super Evil Megacorp (SEM)

• SEM previously released the award-winning mobile game Vainglory 

• Now they’re partnering with IMX to make Shardbound a Web3 game

• It’s still pre-beta

Muy interesante. So, instead of starting from scratch, here you have a group of industry vets taking a game that already had some well-thought-out lore and game loops, and then adding NFTs in a measured way that doesn’t ruin that core fun.

You can see early clips from the game here. I think it looks better than the vast majority of Web3 titles that come across our desk. Then again maybe that isn’t saying much – but still, it looks polished for being in alpha.

Why is this flying under the radar?

Partly because they’re playing down the role that Web3 will play in the game. In fact, there’s no mention of blockchains or NFTs anywhere on the website. Maybe one of the reasons their Twitter still has less than 5k followers.

Honestly, this makes sense. Going too hard on the token aspects is a great way to attract speculators, or generally people who just don’t care about the game at all – it’s a tale as old as time at this point.

Plus, most gamers just see it as an unforgivable sin at the moment. So it’s probably wise to ease them into it.

And yet, they do sound like true believers

Here’s a quote from a recent Q+A where they were asked why they were pivoting into Web3:

I’m not crying, you’re crying.

But really, this one sounds cool and we’re keeping an eye on it.

NOTE: These drops are lightly curated. Our only requirement is that they have recognizable founders. As usual, DYOR. To learn more go here.

Building by Amber Vittoria

Amber Vittoria (a popular artist in web3 known for her colorful, minimalistic and geometric art) recently announced a new open edition, Building.

The art can be minted on 5 different chains via the Holograph platform. However, it looks like the contract is getting absolutely battered by bots in some of them. In it for the art.

Snoop Dogg Passport

Another quarter, another Snoop NFT.

D.O. Double G has partnered with the seemingly omnipresent Transient Labs for the Snoop Dogg Passport, a collectible tied to the artist’s summer tour. This NFT offers holders various perks like behind-the-scenes footage, exclusive artwork by popular web3 artists (good selection) and access to exclusive experiences.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about it, if you are a nerd, is the fact that it integrates Transient Labs’s new Dynamic Refresh NFT mechanic, which updates a token’s metadata without needing a metadata refresh. These guys seem to come out with an innovative implementation every week.

Still Remember by Oxhaiku

Pseudonymous artist 0xhaiku just released Still Remember, a free open edition mixing on-chain art, generative glitch and photography. Now that’s a word salad that’ll get web3 mfs going.

Using a nostalgic 7-year-old picture as the base image for the token, the artist asks users to attach emojis to the mint transaction through the website, linking memories in the process.

Once minted, the NFT image gradually corrupts over a period of 180 days through an on-chain glitch mechanic. Resetting the corruption requires transferring the NFT, but if left untouched for 1,095 days, it becomes irreparable.

This is a niche release by a low-key artist, but as we’ve mentioned before, time-bound mechanics make us feel some type of way.

Flower Sand by yuma yanagisawa

Yuma Yanagisawa, a Japanese coder and artist specialized in XR technologies, is releasing a 100-piece AI art collection, Flower Sand, on Wildxyz tomorrow.

The artist leverages popular AI models to generate flowers (a familiar theme for him) which have then been animated via motion simulation, creating a very ethereal (and to some trippy) piece of work.

This will be the artist’s first NFT release in a while, with most of his collections dating back to 2021.

adidas Originals x FEWOCIOUS – Trefoil Flower Mint Pass

Adidas has partnered with FEWOCiOUS for a limited edition series of Campus 00 sneakers.

4,500 Trefoil Flower Mint Passes drop on June 22nd for 0.2 to 0.25 ETH, which can be redeemed for the physical shoe later this summer.

Upon redeeming the real-world shoe, users get a digital NFT version of it, wearable in FewoWorld and ALTS by Adidas.

Fashion NFTs has been getting hotter the past couple of months, and the technical integrations we could see with this type of release make us curious, so we’ve…

✨ Added to Watch List ✨

THE MINT LIST

1. Taproot Wizards. OG Bitcoin meme inscribed as ordinals

2. Project Animus. RTFKT's biggest launch since Clone-X

3. FewoWorld. New PFP by Fewocious, a rising star in the art world

4. Symbiogenesis. Square Enix's upcoming gaming NFT

5. Garbage Friends. New PFP from the creator of Invisible Friends

6. 10KTF PFP. Drop from a team that includes Yuga and Beeple

7. Dimensionals - EVE. Free gaming PFP from doxxed studio

8. Tony Babel x Typical Friends. Limited edition from the popular artist

9. Ether. Anime PFP collection by viii, an artist with a cult following

10. OCM Dimensions. 3D gen art on Bitcoin from the innovative team