Crypto gaming franchise Pixelverse is launching a new tactical deck builder game that transforms popular cryptocurrency memes into playable characters, the firm announced Thursday.

MemeBattle will feature characters based on the mascots of Base network meme coins, including Brett, Toshi, Keyboard Cat, Dog in Me, Mr. Miggles, Mochi, Ski Mask Dog, and Mochi.

Players will be able to build squads using the meme coin-based characters and compete in battles to earn rewards. Characters from other crypto projects including Pudgy Penguins, Turbo, and Mew will also be featured.

A Pixelverse representative told Decrypt that the game will launch in January with 10 playable meme coin characters in the initial release.

Base is a prominent Ethereum layer-2 scaling network launched by Coinbase, the popular crypto exchange. The upcoming game builds on Pixelverse’s previous success with PixelTap, a Telegram mini-game that attracted millions of players earlier this year ahead of the project’s PIXFI token launch. Pixelverse also has its own, titular flagship metaverse game.

“Base offers a trusted, scalable platform with low fees and seamless wallet integration, making it the ideal choice for founders in Web3 gaming,” said Pixelverse co-founder Kori Leon, in a statement. “We were excited to work with Brett and other leading meme coins as we’re embracing their rise as digital cultural icons.”

Pixelverse has secured funding from crypto exchange Gate.io’s $50 million Meme Fund, which aims to support meme creators and community-focused projects. Pixelverse has also received backing from venture capital firms including Delphi Ventures and Mechanism Capital.

Popular Telegram tap-to-earn game TapSwap revealed it will launch its TAPS token on The Open Network (TON) alongside an airdrop of rewards for players in the second half of January 2025. 

TAPS will become a critical resource in the TapSwap ecosystem, the developers said, granting holders access to tournaments, staking rewards, and governance participation. 

Whether or not a player receives the TAPS airdrop will be determined by the player’s overall engagement within TapSwap—in other words, how often a player interacted within TapSwap or played the game. Users will need to connect their wallet to receive the airdrop.

What started as a tap-to-earn game on Telegram, in which users repeatedly tap a button on the screen to earn in-game coins, has since evolved. In August, the game added a city builder mode called “Tappy Town,” and achievements accrued through that experience will also affect the likelihood of receiving a TAPS airdrop. 

Alongside the airdrop, the game’s evolution is expected to continue. TapSwap is transitioning into a skill-based platform, offering competitive tournaments to players and “leaving traditional pay-to-win models behind,” a representative for the game told Decrypt. 

The platform has amassed more than 50 million users globally since its launch in February.

Telegram gaming and participation on The Open Network has blossomed this year, led by popular mini apps and games like Hamster Kombat and Notcoin. Notcoin famously dropped more than 35 million players over 80 billion tokens earlier this year, gaining listings from Binance and OKX in the process. 

The Open Network is a layer-1 network created by Nikolai and Pavel Durov, the co-founders of messaging app Telegram. While development began internally, the company dropped the project in 2020 under regulatory scrutiny, leading a community of external developers to continue building the ecosystem.

Its native token, Toncoin (TON), has risen nearly 200% in the last year, pushing it to more than a $16 billion market cap. That’s made it the 16th-largest crypto asset by market capitalization, according to CoinGecko. 

Edited by Andrew Hayward

Avalanche-based battle royale shooter Off the Grid has launched its most significant update since entering early access in October. Patch notes reviewed by Decrypt note that the game has reworked how scoped weapons work, added what developer Gunzilla Games framed as a notable performance boost, and made a number of weapon balance changes.

After entering early access in October, Off the Grid attracted mainstream attention with tons of clips that showcased the game’s unique mechanics going viral. This helped contribute to the title topping the Epic Games free-to-play PC game list, even surpassing Epic’s own mega-hit Fortnite in the process.

At its core, Off the Grid is a third-person shooter. However, scoped weapons—such as the sniper rifles—require some first-person elements. In previous builds, this has largely been ignored by the player base, as it felt jarring to go from third to first person. Even then, it didn’t feel like much of an advantage.

This system has been significantly reworked in what the team is calling Proper First-Person Perspective in Aim Down Sights mode—also known as TrueFPV. From gameplay seen by Decrypt, it does appear to be a marked improvement, giving scoped weapons a much better feel for players than in previous builds.

With this major rework, there are now new reticles, tweaks to field of vision, and accuracy changes. Namely, aim assist has been improved for controller players—although some users in the game’s official Discord server believe this is too overpowered in its current form.

An underrated but noticeable change comes with improvements to weapon sway and camera shake when using the weapon. This gives fighting a much more intense feel.

A prominent criticism of the game up until this point has been its poor performance, particularly on PC. In this update, the game promises a 10% to 20% frames-per-second (FPS) boost. On consoles, this comes in the form of fidelity and performance modes, with the former seeing a 10% frame boost and the latter marking as much as a 40% improvement.

Player backpacks have also received changes, mostly regarding visual effects to better communicate their purpose; for example, the limb accelerator backpack shows when a cyberlimb is being charged. That said, the Gridshield Backpack has been nerfed to only reduce 50% of zone damage, compared to its previous full protection.

Lastly, the patch notes have four pages worth of weapon and cyberlimb changes that are sure to mix up the meta. On top of this, in-game movement has received a number of changes, which has led to Discord users complaining that the game feels slower than before. 

These changes, the document says, are in preparation for an upcoming ranked mode.

Edited by Andrew Hayward