Launched in open beta last month, Nifty Island is one of the biggest crypto games of the moment. That’s in part because it delivers a compelling, crypto-infused take on Roblox and Fortnite’s Creative Mode, serving up creative tools and letting people build and play without spending a dime.
The other part of its appeal is the ISLAND airdrop ahead.
Nifty Island’s play-to-airdrop campaign has undoubtedly been key to its recent rise in attention, and the game’s co-founder Charles Smith recently joined Decrypt’s GG for a video interview to detail his mindset towards what he sees as a DeFi-inspired distribution of tokens that can serve as a “booster rocket” for the game’s adoption.
Smith also took the time to share a few tips for making the most of the current wave of the airdrop campaign, which is intentionally limited to people who own certain NFTs and whose wallets have some on-chain history.
Future waves may shift gears, but for now, Nifty Island is eager to avoid the “professionalized farmers”—people who, in his view, are just grinding and grinding to earn potential rewards without really enjoying the game experience.
You can watch the clip above to learn more about how Nifty Island is approaching token incentives and the play-to-airdrop campaign, or continue reading for recommendations on how to maximize your airdrop-centric efforts as you play the free PC game.
Do the challenges
Nifty Island’s daily challenges are there for a reason, Smith says. They’ll help encourage you to hop around and check out various worlds and games that people have created, but they also play into making progress in the game.
“Show up, do a few cool things a day, play some games, and complete your daily challenges,” he explained. “You'll get an outsized amount of Blooms for doing that.”
Play around
The world of Nifty Island is constantly expanding, since anyone can create and share their own worlds and playable games. That means you’ll potentially never run out of new things to see and play, and that’s good news—because you’ll make progress towards the airdrop by sampling various games. You won’t get endless benefits, but it pays to play.
“Play a lot of games up to some limit,” Smith said. “Eventually, there's diminishing returns. That's to avoid farming—and when I say farming, [it’s] the cynical kind of drudgery of farming that isn't really fun, right?”
Bring people in
If you’ve created a playable world in Nifty Island and you’re happy with the results, then why not share it widely? Not only might that be a fun and gratifying experience that can bring friends new and old into your world, but it will also pay off with play-to-airdrop progress.
Smith said to expect some enhancements in how social media sharing works around Nifty Island, calling it “one of the most important things” that they want to improve.
“If you really want to level up, [it’s about] sharing your island, getting foot traffic—like, create a really cool Island and host a lot of games,” he said. “In the future, that system is going to get deeply refined, like the way the island links are shared and why they're shared.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.