People Are Going Nuts for This New 'Crypto-AR' Game on Solana

A new game studio called GG.zip launched early access for “Solana Hunger Games” Monday and quickly almost melted Crypto Twitter (Crypto X). As of today, more than 100,000 people are following the account on X, and their site crashed yesterday after being hit with over 2 million page views in its first 24 hours, the founders said.

Solana Hunger Games, which is modeled on the popular "Hunger Games" series (sort of), will reward players who hunt down treasure in a mobile phone-based Augmented Reality. The gaming studio is backed by the crypto VC arm of Delphi Digital, as well as influencers such as Cozomo Medici, Gmoney, Cooper Turley, and others. 

(Video by Rug Radio Creator AshleyDCan. Disclosure: Ashley holds SOL.)

The game, which launches in the Spring, plans to mix AR (a la Pokemon Go) with crypto to create what GG (no relation to Decrypt's GG) is calling “ARC,” which stands for Augmented Reality Crypto.

Players will be able to choose to play as a “Hunter,” or speculate on the outcome of games as a “Sponsor.” Hunters are expected to explore the “Host city” and search for AR GBoxes, which are filled with “G.”

G is a token that is claimable as of Monday to Solana users based on “how degen” they are on the Solana blockchain. While you can “claim” the token on the website, the token itself isn’t live and hasn’t been distributed to any wallets.

Players will be able to earn G through a referral program. Each player gets 10 invites, earns 20% of the G claimed by their invitees, and earns 10% of their invitees’ invitees claimed G. It sounds a lot like a Pon… erm, Amway.

At the moment, notable degens Ansem and 0xLawliette are in second and third place on the invite leaderboard, with a mysterious player named CATCAT holding down the first-place position.

In the game, “Hunters” will race to collect as much G as possible, and their stats will be tracked in a leaderboard displayed on the GG website. The user who finds and acquires the most G, wins. Hunters will compete for a growing jackpot of G and the pot will get bigger as more players join the game and trading volume increases.

Sponsors play a similar role to sponsors in the Hunger Games, except, they can bet on you too. I was unable to find information on how exactly that will work—but it seems like Sponsors can acquire “Player cards” of their favorite characters, and players’ odds of winning change as they move up and down the leaderboard, changing the value of the Player cards.

Currently, the game is invite-only, but plenty of people have taken to X to share invite codes—and a quick search for “ggdotzip codes” will bring up some codes that you can use to join in the fun.

As always, caveat emptor.