April showers bring May playtests! May kicks off with a bang as we have even more playtests for you to try. And in the world of high-priced NFTs, we have a new contender taking the crown for highest volume of sales this past week! Who is it? Read on to find out!
Web3 gaming continues to launch new playtests left and right. New entries this week include Mojo Melee bringing players a chance to play to mint in their open beta, Everseed launching a new demo with numerous updates, Uldor updating their Dread Arena, R3V3NGE offering players a chance to kill zombies in their open beta, and Gala Games dropping some May Mayhem on their players, with events happening across their entire game portfolio!
And best of all, these are all actual games! Ones where you need to use skill and/or strategy to succeed. The latest web3 game developments are rapidly putting the days of casino games and click-miners behind us. Which of these up and coming games will manage to catch and hold the attention of gamers over the upcoming months?
Read on for a look at the most active web3 games and NFT projects for the week. And be sure to keep an eye on our website and Twitter feed for the latest developments in the web3 gaming space!
Top play-to-earn games by active users
| Game | Active Users 7 days | Change |
| 1. Iskra | 364.53k | -78.01% |
| 2. Alien Worlds | 303.61k | +3.82% |
| 3. Splinterlands | 94.2k | +16.36% |
| 4. Farmers World | 87.14k | -7.53% |
| 5. Upland | 63.21k | -8.38% |
| 6. Benji Bananas | 48.54k | -1.97% |
| 7. Axie Infinity | 30.57k | -4.68% |
| 8. Planet IX | 28.97k | +55.45% |
| 9. Arc8 | 28.87k | +12.63% |
| 10. SecondLive | 26.71k | -13.33% |
DappRadar cant seem to make up their minds, as Iskra is back on top of their charts this week, even with a 78% decline in active users. But we talked before about how most of the Iskra player count comes from users (bots most likely) hitting the website for the daily spin-to-win feature. Which is a good example of how stats like these can be misleading at times. But, we work with what we have, and these numbers are still meaningful.
Planet IX goes down. Planet IX goes up. After a 50% reduction in active players last week, Planet IX rebounds with a 50% gain this week. Splinterlands managed to stop their bleeding, for now at least. Though they are still way down from their peak of 300k weekly users.
Otherwise, we still have the usual list of suspects in our top 10 this week.
Top 10 NFT collections by volume traded
| Collection | Volume traded 7 days | Volume Change |
| 1. Azuki | $23.83M | +43.22% |
| 2. Mutant Ape Yacht Club | $19.45M | -21.87% |
| 3. Bored Ape Yacht Club | $19.26M | +58.99% |
| 4. CryptoPunks | $15.92M | +92.34% |
| 5. Milady Maker | $8.08M | +77.62% |
| 6. DeGods | $6.34M | -13.05% |
| 7. Blocklords Banners | $4.1M | -21.96% |
| 8. The Captainz | $3.99M | -15.11% |
| 9. Moonbirds | $3.18M | -34.85% |
| 10. Pudgy Penguins | $3.05M | -24.59% |
Well look at this. A project not affiliated with BAYC takes the top spot this week! Azuki leads the pack with an impressive 23 million in sales over the past week!
And despite some major increases for a few projects, overall NFT sales continue to remain depressed this week. Which reinforces the idea that a lot of the heavy activity over the past few months was wash trading and market manipulation rather than actual user interest.
We also have another surprising entry from Blocklords. This is a rare sighting of a game project in the top 10, and is also the only project in the top 20 on Immutable X. Though I suspect we may see more from Immutable X over the coming months!
