The 2024 GAM3 Blockchain Game Awards have been announced, with “Off The Grid” winning Game of the Year (GOTY)!
Last year, the foreign blockchain game media “GAM3.GG” announced the 2024 GAM3 Game Awards, which were jointly selected by more than 70 professional judges from the traditional gaming and blockchain gaming fields, including representatives from giants such as Amazon, Google, Samsung, and Ubisoft.
The selection process used a mechanism where the judges accounted for 90% of the votes, and the community accounted for 10% of the votes. The “People’s Choice” and “Best Content Creator” awards were completely decided by community votes.
In this selection, “Off The Grid” swept four major awards, including the most important Game of the Year (TGA) award. “Parallel” closely followed, winning three awards, while “Pixels” and “Pirate Nation” each won two awards.
Here is the complete list of winners:
Best Fighting Game: Champions Ascension
Best Art Direction: Moonfrost
Best Web Game: Pirate Nation
Best Mobile Game: Fableborne
Best Role-Playing Game: Big Time
Best Strategy Game: Parallel
Best Action Game: Off the Grid
Best Casual Game: Pixels
Best Sports Game: Sparkball
Best Adventure Game: Ravenquest
Best Card Game: Parallel
Best Shooting Game: Off the Grid
Best Content Creator: YellowPanther
Best Full-Chain Game: Pirate Nation
Best Ecosystem: Ronin
Game Developer’s Choice: Wildcard
Best Esports Game: Parallel
Best Multiplayer Game: Off the Grid
Player’s Choice: Pixels
Most Anticipated Game: MapleStory N
Game of the Year: Off the Grid
The winners of the 2024 GAM3 Blockchain Game Awards for the 21 categories have been announced.
Introduction and Evaluation of the winners of the Best Web3 Game Award by GAM3.GG are as follows:
1. Game of the Year, Shooting Game, Action Game, and Multiplayer Game: “Off the Grid”
“Off the Grid,” directed by Neill Blomkamp, the director of “District 9” and “Elysium,” is a chaotic battle royale game. The game combines stunning visual effects with rich narrative content, perfectly blending tactical shooting, survival, and exploration elements.
“Off the Grid” has released an early access version, offering a 60-player battle mode where players can team up in groups of three. The game features an innovative “cybernetic” system that allows players to customize different leg and arm attachments, each with unique abilities.
Although it is currently in early access and still has some optimization issues, the overall performance and potential of the game have been unanimously recognized by the judges.
2. Most Anticipated Game: “MapleStory N”
“MapleStory N,” developed by Nexpace, a subsidiary of NEXON, is a MapleStory Universe game that inherits the classic 2D art style and gameplay features of “MapleStory.”
The game retains core gameplay such as endless monster hunting, job system, and guild socialization while introducing the NFT system. The game’s story revolves around the search for MapleStory heroes, and players can choose different career development paths.
“MapleStory N” integrates a gas-free NFT forging system and introduces an economic system that removes the cash shop, allowing players to fully engage in the game world. The game is scheduled to be released in the first half of 2025.
3. Best Strategy Esports and Card Game: “Parallel”
“Parallel” is an NFT trading card game (TCG) developed by a team with experience in developing multiple AAA games. The game is set in a world where disasters caused by excessive exploitation of Earth’s resources have occurred, and five civilizations return to Earth after ten thousand years to fight for their homeland.
“Parallel” has received praise for its exquisite card design and deep strategic gameplay. Each card has voice acting and carefully designed animation effects. The combat system is well balanced, providing players with a rich space for strategic choices.
4. Best Casual Game and Player’s Choice: “Pixels”
“Pixels” is a pixel-style farm management game with over 900,000 players. It adopts a free-to-play model, allowing players to own their own land and engage in farming. The game development team includes developers from renowned game companies such as Gamehouse and Ubisoft.
The main gameplay of the game is resource collection, farming, and item crafting. Players can cultivate on other players’ land through the sharing farming mechanism, and landowners can earn resource sharing from it. The pixel art style and sound effects of the game are of a certain standard, but there is room for improvement in the new player guidance system.
5. Best Web and Full-Chain Game: “Pirate Nation”
“Pirate Nation” is a web game with a pirate theme, where players need to control an island and recruit pirate crew members. The game is built entirely on the blockchain and uses an innovative gas-free transaction system, making game interactions fast and smooth.
The game’s art adopts a pixel style, and players can accept challenges and rewards through the mission bulletin board, build their own ships, and participate in maritime adventures. The game also includes a world event system, such as monster attacks, allowing players to cooperate against common threats.
6. Best Fighting Battle Game: “Champions Ascension”
“Champions Ascension” is set in the Massina theme park metaverse, where players’ heroes come from different worlds and fight to conquer the Eternal Arena. The game is currently in the testing phase and offers a variety of mini-games and PvP arena combat systems.
The game includes various fun mini-games such as crab racing and dice battles. The arena combat system is well designed, with characters from different backgrounds having mutual restraint, adding strategic depth to the battles.
7. Best RPG Game: “Big Time”
“Big Time” is a multiplayer cooperative RPG game that combines fast-paced action combat, NFT collectibles, and an adventure story spanning history. The game emphasizes teaming up with friends to explore procedurally generated dungeons.
The game provides a rich NFT looting experience, although the distribution mechanism is somewhat random. Players can expand and personalize their bases through the time machine system, and the SPACE NFT system provides rich gameplay features and practicality.
Although the game’s monster spawning process can feel repetitive, it has created a relatively complete multiplayer cooperative RPG experience for a Web3 game.
8. Best Game Developer’s Choice: “Wildcard”
“Wildcard” is a 1v1 competitive game where players need to use deck-building skills and in-game abilities to defeat opponents. The game is currently in the testing phase and offers two selectable heroes: Bolgar & Burr from the nature faction and Locke from the tech faction, along with his mechanical dog Wotchy.
The game’s visual effects and mechanics are excellent, with each hero having unique skills and summon combinations. The development team revealed plans to introduce a 2v2 mode and innovative features such as audience interaction in the future.
9. Best Sports Game: “Sparkball”
“Sparkball” (formerly known as Edenbrawl) is a MOBA-style sports game that completely redesigned the UI and art style, transforming the originally dark world into a bright and lively arena. The game uses a top-down perspective and features 5v5 team competition, with the main objective being to seize the ball and score in the opponent’s end zone.
The game offers eight unique hero characters, each with their own special abilities. The NFT system does not affect game balance and is mainly used for collecting and showcasing in the community.
10. Best Adventure Game: “Ravenquest”
“Ravenquest” is a highly immersive MMORPG with a high degree of freedom. The game features a unique job system, allowing players to choose three combinations from eight prototypes to create 56 different career combinations.
The game provides ten professional skills, including forging, woodworking, and weaving, forming a complete player-driven economy system. Through the NFT system, players can own in-game assets such as estates, mounts, and ships.
11. Best Mobile Game: “Fableborne”
“Fableborne” is a mobile game that combines base-building and raiding gameplay. Players strategically place defense towers and monsters to protect their islands while choosing three heroes for raid battles.
The game’s feature lies in the randomly generated island terrain that affects the difficulty of defense. The tower defense and hero systems have rich upgrade choices. Although there are some balance issues at higher levels, it provides a deep strategic experience for mobile players.
12. Best Art Design: “Moonfrost”
“Moonfrost” is a simulation game similar to “Harvest Moon” and “Stardew Valley,” where players take care of farms and grow better crops. It also offers multiple customization features for players to decorate their farms. Of course, players who want to make money can also enjoy the fun of farming to earn in-game tokens.
“Moonfrost” excels in art design and sound performance. Even with pixel-style graphics, the detailed environment enhances the overall gaming experience.
The GAM3 Blockchain Game Awards ceremony attracted 48,000 people watching online simultaneously and received over 450,000 views within the first 24 hours, setting a new record. The event also showcased the premiere trailers of several games, including “Golden Tides,” “Unfettered,” and “Elumia,” among others.
This year, the total prize pool for GAM3 has increased to $5 million, with support and sponsorship from partners such as AWS, XAI, and Thirdweb, providing grants, product services, and marketing support. In terms of community voting, more than 143,000 players participated, with a total of over 1 million votes cast, generating over 60 million impressions on social media.
“GAM3.GG” stated that the GAM3 Game Awards, held for four consecutive years, has become the most influential annual event in the Web3 gaming industry, showcasing the promising development prospects of the blockchain gaming industry. This year, the GAM3 Blockchain Game Awards are expected to be held again in November.
This article is licensed and reprinted from: Crypto City.