Here’s what I’ve discovered after a day of reading the whitepaper and playing the game.

• $SILK is very well balanced

• The ease of earning is fantastic

• The game is actually fun

• Pay to win is already presenting problems

• Server population is slim

Keep reading for the details!

First things first — This game is fun! The barrier to entry is low — the gameplay is fast enough to feel exciting but slow enough to be strategic, graphics and art are great, and the game loop is engaging.

Big win for web3!

Here is an overview of the core gameplay loop of Spider Tanks: Win matches, earn Victory Points, mint $SILK the next day according to the Victory Points-to-SILK ratio which is based on prior days token spend/burn, Buy tank upgrades so you can win more matches and earn more.

The Honor Point system is worth its own article. This system incentivizes players to bring/keep value in the system and punishes them for taking value out. The more honor you have (buying NFTs, winning matches, buying $SILK on secondary) the more earning potential —

The less Honor you have — lost when you sell $SILK for ETH or when you send $SILK to a new wallet — the less earning potential you have per match.

Something that stood out to me was how easy it is to get started — you don’t need to connect a wallet to play AND earn.

Using their Pilot Program, you can start earning within minutes with a one-click lending program where a Tank owner (NFT) shares in the rewards with you.

There are ways to earn outside of gameplay. Stake a Planetary Node to offer your computing power to host the matches and earn. Stake a Map NFT to let players play on YOUR map and earn. Also — the higher level tanks you own (from playing) increase these earnings!

The team at Spider Tanks is very active in the community as well as balancing and bug fixing — they are continually tweaking the stat balance and economic faucets/sinks.

Now, some problems I noticed:

• Pay to win seems to definitely be creating issues already because you can purchase weapon upgrades with SILK. I was in a match against an entire team using a laser that could shoot through walls and they were DEMOLISHING me. Not fun.

• Secondly, (this is really a web3 gaming issue industry wide) but the server populations are still quite low which create long queue times. Sometimes 8 minutes, sometimes 1 as a solo queue. But grouped in a party of 2 and we waited 30 minutes without finding a match :/

• Also, it took me about 30 minutes to get into the game because the launcher didn’t have an option as to which drive to install on and my C drive is loaded — so I spent time trying to find out how to install to D, before having to just empty some space from my C drive. Minor but created a huge barrier. If I wasn’t writing this article, I wouldn’t have played.

To sum it up — I think this game has made a massive leap in the right direction for P2E gaming as a whole. They executed beautifully — and to see the e-sports community rallying behind it is promising. I look forward to seeing how $SILK stays balanced in the long haul.

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