Blockchain games have always been a field I look forward to.

Although there are various games that occasionally become popular on different public chains, they basically cannot escape the token incentive model. Once the token incentive mechanism is removed, the remaining gameplay, experience, and fun are hard to compete with traditional internet games.

Currently, it seems that token incentives are difficult to sustain, so these games are at most just "minor episodes" in the blockchain gaming field; they are unlikely to raise the banner for blockchain games.

In addition, there is another category of blockchain games that focus on visual experience, smoothness, and other aspects. I believe the space for these types of games is also quite limited, as the areas they focus on are strengths of centralized servers, and blockchain technology struggles to compete with them.

The blockchain games I am more excited about are those that allow people to create a whole new world on-chain through gameplay.

A team called Lattice once created a user-built game on the Optimism Layer 2 scaling solution. In the game, a team announced the establishment of a "Crypto Republic."

This game once caused a sensation among a small niche geek community, and I have introduced it in an article.

Lattice refers to this type of game as an Autonomous World.

Unfortunately, that game was just a test version, and the Lattice team later discontinued its development. However, they did not give up on the goal of building autonomous worlds; instead, they shifted their focus to building game infrastructure and developing tools. Additionally, they specifically built a Layer 2 scaling solution based on Ethereum called Redstone, which is positioned for constructing autonomous worlds.

Since then, I have not seen any interesting new projects in the blockchain gaming space.

Recently, Bankless introduced two games that seem to give me a glimmer of hope.

One of them is Biomes (https://biomes.aw/).

This game is built on Redstone and uses many components and tools developed by the Lattice team, allowing users to freely create their own "items" in the game and endow these "items" with various functions.

The game is still in its very early stages, and it may not be until the first quarter of next year that users can truly create and implement various functions on a large scale.

I tried this game, and overall, it still feels very rough, with very little relevant information. I spent half a day figuring out some basic actions on my own, and as for creating items and realizing the functions described in the game, I couldn't find any trace of it after searching for a long time.

The other game is Eternum on Starknet (https://eternum.realms.world/).

This game evolved from an early Ethereum NFT project similar to Loot (Realms). At that time, I bought its NFT and even staked it.

But since then, I had forgotten about this project. Years have passed, and I thought this project had long since died, but unexpectedly, it is still alive and has become one of the more notable games on Starknet, even mentioned by Bankless.

This project follows a very similar path to Biomes, aiming to build an autonomous world on-chain, with core gameplay also very similar, allowing users to freely create new worlds in the game.

Both games are currently very rudimentary, and the functions they showcase are far from what is described in their documentation. Their current state is not worth discussing in detail; what I find valuable and meaningful is that the direction they are heading in is what I have always anticipated, and they have been striving toward that direction all these years.

In fact, there are already similar games in traditional gaming, the most well-known being Roblox. However, I have always felt that the games built on Roblox are just buildings on the beach; no matter how beautiful, they are not sturdy, and they cannot become a new world. Only with blockchain technology as the foundation can we have a truly new world.

Whether autonomous worlds are a direction for blockchain games to break through the barriers, at least for now, I see no other possibilities for breaking through except this direction. Therefore, I am very much looking forward to these types of projects making stunning progress next year.