Ev.io is a free-to-play, web-based shooter reminiscent of first-person shooter pioneers like Quake and Unreal Tournament—but this one lets users earn cryptocurrency to play as well.
Set in a futuristic world, your character is equipped with a weapon of your choice and a melee weapon. You have the option to fight enemies in a free-for-all deathmatch or battle it out in teams, plus you can enter a sniper mode with a shotgun or a survival mode similar to the popular Call of Duty experience “Zombies”.
In all available modes, you can get unique weapons or health upgrades from the ground. The special weapons are a lot of fun to use and source some of my favorite moments in the game. There’s something so cool about shooting someone with a rocket launcher across the map.
You can also choose a variety of skills and equipment before entering a game. In a fairly limited skill tree, you have the option to activate abilities to teleport, triple jump, and more.
A personal favorite is the impulse grenade that can drop any unlucky opponent on the map. This makes for a lot of fun gameplay and cool moments in the game—and sure enough, launching yourself into the air and sniping someone just feels great.
That said, the impulse grenades, teleportation, and other movement controls in the game can make the game difficult to pick up at first. Not only do you have to spend time learning how to use these options effectively, but it also means that hitting your enemy is harder.
Very rarely will you encounter anyone standing, and with character models so poor, this can be hard to adjust to at first. For this reason, trip wires and mining are super useful. You can place them in a high traffic area and play around them, luring your enemies into an explosive score or using them to protect your back.
An NFT boost
After purchasing an optional Ev.io NFT IN Solana and by equipping it in the game, you can earn an in-game currency called “e”. The amount of e’s you earn is based on your score in the game, which is mostly based on the number of kills you get. You can also earn from events, daily quests, clan wars and more.
Once you have 10,000 e, you can convert it to Solana (SOL) and then you can choose to cash out for fiat currency on an exchange. or developer from the Ev.io team said on Discord decode that conversion rate varies, but is roughly $1 in SOL value per 2,000 “e”s earned as of this writing.
I bought Bonk character– named for Cryptocurrency BONKitself inspired by Dogecoin AND Shiba Inu— for about $22 SOL. Not only did this make me stand out and feel cool in the game, but the play-to-win element really intensified the experience for me. I felt like I was a hit man; each kill counted to slowly earn the money I would have thrown away.
After an hour of playing – only once at the top of the table – I won 124 e. That’s only worth about six cents worth of SOL when converted, so it’s clear that events, quests, and clan wars should be your primary form of attack if you plan to make your money back.
Acquaintance begins
Despite Ev.io’s excellent foundations, it feels like there’s a lack of variety that makes you want to start the game over and over again. The gun meta feels pretty stagnant since everyone uses the auto rifle. Sometimes I switched and used the laser rifle for fun, but the other default weapons didn’t seem to get much use.
Likewise, the difference between free-for-all and team deathmatch wasn’t very noticeable. It doesn’t feel like teamwork is really important, which means that both game modes have a similar feel. You can get into sniper rifle mode, but you can’t earn e-currency there – and ultimately, it comes off as a limiting riff on the free-for-all mode.
For this reason, survival mode like Zombies has an important place in the game to take a break from the online death strife.
The variety of Ev.io maps is quite impressive. They all have unique color schemes with fun sightlines and places to boot. Rarely do maps fall into the typical three-lane structure that many shooters rely on. And there isn’t a map that I groan about when it comes up.
Ev.io’s graphics are very basic to optimize the game for all desktop devices. That said, while simple, the art style is in keeping with its futuristic theme, opting for sleek lines and neon colors – giving off a ‘Tron’ vibe throughout.
Overall, Ev.io is a great option among crypto and NFT games, especially considering that it is free to play and available for anyone to play in a web browser. The emphasis on movement makes traversing the map fun while adding a unique skill curve to the game.
That said, after a few hours of playing the game, it can become a bit repetitive with the lack of variety in weapon metas and game modes. That’s why the play-to-win element is a major selling point for the game’s longevity. With the repeated game modes, the desire to improve in the game to earn more in-game currency is essential.
If you are looking for a game to win, with a focus on skills and rewards for those using NFTs, then Ev.io might be the game for you.
