What is Nyan Heroes?
Nyan Heroes is an upcoming free-to-play, team-based shooting game in which players take on the role of cats piloting giant mech suits.
The game is set in a futuristic world called Nekovia, where cats have become the dominant species. The word Nyan is the Japanese word for “meow.”
Nyan Heroes features a variety of classes, each with unique abilities and roles such as Assassin, Medic, Warrior, and Sniper. Players can engage in battles in the Battledome, a central arena in New Nekovia, the rebuilt underground city. The game is oriented around a third-person perspective where teams need to secure various map objectives in order to win. The game will feature unique abilities, customizable mech loadouts and weapons, and various mods.
What does Nyan Heroes have to do with cryptocurrency?
Nyan Heroes integrates blockchain technology in multiple ways. One of these is through its “Genesis NFTs,” which provide early access to certain upcoming features of the game, staking rewards, in-game purchases, and more.
According to the Nyan Heroes whitepaper, the game has an in-game “premium” currency called Catnip (CTNP), which is earned through playing the game and is used to purchase rewards, such as in-game skins, account boosts, and marketplace purchases as well as to unlock characters and weapons. Catnip is not a blockchain-based token but rather a virtual currency.
NYAN, on the other hand, is the game’s native token based on the Solana blockchain. The whitepaper states that players can spend “NYAN to mint or ‘awaken’ their in-game items to unlock the NFT-gated rewards pathway.” This means players will be able to take their in-game assets out of the in-game marketplace and trade them on-chain as NFTs. It can also be used for marketplace transaction fees, rental fees for in-game assets, community governance, and token locks to receive special privileges and rewards.
The Nyan Heroes developers claim an increase in network activity and marketplace fees will drive demand for NYAN. However, Nyan Heroes developers stress interacting with the blockchain aspects of the game is optional for players.
Development of Nyan Heroes
Nyan Heroes was first announced in August 2021 by its developers, 9 Lives Interactive (previously Rude Robot Studios), and is powered by Unreal Engine 5. Developers completed seed round fundraising and launched private and public sales of their Genesis NFTs in the same year. The NFTs allowed holders to receive airdrops, earn the initial in-game token CTNP, and more.
The first playable beta version of the game was released in 2023. In April 2024, the game was listed on Epic Games Store for a two-week pre-alpha, which proved popular and saw the game rank as one of the top 30 most played games, with over 200,000 downloads. It was also one of the top wishlisted upcoming games at the time.
The full-version release is set to launch in 2025.
Disclaimer: This article was produced with the assistance of OpenAI’s ChatGPT 3.5/4 and reviewed and edited by our editorial team.
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