Axie Infinity - Get Your Team Ready

“Axie Infinity is a game centered around collecting, raising, breeding, and battling fantasy creatures called Axies. Axies come in many forms: they can resemble cats, birds, and fish, and some might even have Dragon genes hiding in their DNA. Players will interact and power-up their Axies through minigames, quests, contests, and special in-game events. Axie Infinity uses the Ethereum Blockchain to ensure open, transparent ownership and a liquid, secure marketplace. Players have complete ownership of their Axies and will be able to trade and sell them smoothly and securely.” [From Axie Infinity Whitepaper]

Take CryptoKitties mix it with Pokemon and throw in one of those Tamagotchi digital pets that were popular in the 90’s and you may get something awesome. The developers behind Axie Infinity are doing just that and it looks really fun.

Each Axie is a uniquely blended creature, having its own genetic identification on the Ethereum blockchain. Like CryptoKitties, Axies can be bred together to create new creatures with a mix-match of its parents genes. These genes dictate all of an Axie’s physical traits, which in turn controls it’s class, stats and available battle moves. There are currently six classes of Axies, such as Beast, Plant, etc, some more common than others and all with different base stats. Stats are further modified by the six body parts an Axie inherits from it's parents. Here is an explanation of stats:

Axie Infinity is still in development with only some of the games features available right now. Currently players are able to purchase, trade and breed Axies in preparation for the upcoming battle system. Alpha testing of the battle system is expected to start within the next few weeks on Ethereum’s Rinkeby testnet, but there is one prerequisite if you would like to get in on the closed alpha tests, you need to have at least one “Origin” Axie.

Origin Axies are the first generation of Axies which were made available in the game’s presale. That sale has been over for a few months but don’t worry, there are lots of Origin Axies available through the games marketplace for around 0.15 Eth (and up). One is all you need to get a peek at the battle alpha testing, but ideally you would want three Axies to fill up your team. The “Axie Lab” is another alternative when shopping for Axies. The Lab (which closes July 7th, 5PM GMT btw.) offers Axie eggs for sale, auction style, directly from the developers. I picked up a few for about 0.075 Eth each and definitely do not regret it. The eggs develop into “Meo Corp” Axies after a few days. Instead of inherited traits, these newly made Axies get a randomized mix of parts and act as a way to introduce new genes to the Axie genepool.
Egg Shop.PNG
Preparing for battle looks like a lot of fun. Axies attack each other in order of their speed, fastest first. The moves they use are chosen before the battle is started, four moves for each Axie. Once all four moves have been used, the cycle begins again and continues until one of the teams is defeated. So players get to strategize which Axies and which moves will be most effective together.

Besides breeding and battling, the developers intend to add more interactions for you and your Axies. The roadmap lists a few things, like terrariums and questing, take a look here:

This game looks like it will be a lot of fun. I got myself an nice squad, or two if I decide to breed some of them. If you like collecting and battling cute little digital pets, I suggest checking this one out. Here are some official Axie links: