Splinterlands is an online collectible card game that uses blockchain technology the way you’re already familiar with. The cards in the game are owned by players as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and players can win real money through tournaments, ranked play, and quests.
Choose a faction and settle a game in minutes
We won’t be blaming TikTok for the 5-second attention spans that seem to consume young gamers these days, but if you’re tired of spending minutes to wait for loading screens and then go through the same grind of turn-based battles that most NFT card games have, you might enjoy the fact that Splinterlands has an ADHD complex – the battles are rapid, fast, furious, with an average game session lasting only a few minutes.
How it works
Getting into the game is pretty straightforward here and we’ll sum it up for you:
- Sign up on the main website at Splinterlands.com.
- You will need a HIVE account to start playing but the good news is that you can get one just by buying a Starter Pack. That’s $10 at time of writing, payable with crypto, credit card or PayPal.
- Open your pack in the Mana Well (or click Open in the top menu). You’ll now get a set of random cards with different types of rarity. The rarer the card, the more powerful and valuable it is.
- View your cards in the Collections menu option. You’re ready to battle actually!
Gameplay
You’re free to practice and it won’t cost you any points or money except a bit of time. But the real devil in the enjoyment is in ranked matches where you can gain or lose points, and even wager Splinterlands booster packs if you like to add a bit of fun to the stakes.
To play, you just need to click the Battle icon, after which the system will match you with someone else looking to fight.
During gameplay, you need to understand that cards are split into 2 types: summoner cards and monster cards. Monster cards are characters that fight, summoner cards summon these characters. Typically, you look for a good summoner capable of summoning powerful monsters, and you use the monsters to defeat your opponent.
While raw power usually wins the day, strategy and positioning are important on the battlefield as anticipation of opponent moves could be used to your advantage.
As your monsters on the frontlines perish, you can move others from the back to replace them, although they only move front, so how you place your monsters are vital. Since abilities also affect positions (some also affect adjacent monsters), you can see that how you arrange your troops can maximise some abilities.
About the cards
There are currently over 500 different cards in Splinterlands, with more being added every time. Obviously, you’ll have to experiment with them to get a robust setup that balances each other or complements each other. Together, there are about 70 unique abilities employable by all of these cards.
Rarity varies from Common, Rare, Epic, and Legendary, and of course each can have different levels and different circulation limits.
Each card then bears different statistics: types of attack, speed, armor, health and mana cost, and are also aligned to 7 different elements or Splinters as they’re called: Fire, Earth, Water, Life, Death, Dragon, and Neutral. These are the factions you’re aligned with – neutral simply means you’re a sword for hire.
Player Growth and Popularity
Despite the slowdown in crypto markets, Splinterlands has managed to stay in a very respectable Top 5 of most used games, according to DappRadar. Currently, it is ranked #2 as of March 2023, a spot it’s held on for many months.
Over 157,000 users were recorded on a daily basis throughout November on Splinterlands and this has roughly halved to 78,000 in March 2023. That’s a drop most games have experienced anyway, so that gives you an idea of a growing and still popular game, with plenty of opponents to look for and battle. And the top NFTs being traded daily are still in a fairly affordable price range, roughly $300 for the most expensive traded right now.
Competitions are also regularly held and some $5 million in tournament prizes have already been distributed. If you feel like retiring, you can also sell all your NFTs on the marketplace, so the potential to earn for a good player is pretty good the way we see it
