One month ago I started playing Gods Unchained, a free to play, play to earn crypto game. Here is an unbiased review from someone with [almost] nothing to lose or gain by telling the truth.

Disclosure: when I got into this game I had none of the tokens associated with this game other than ETH. As of writing I have roughly $150 in GODS which is the token you are paid for playing the game. I have invested zero of my own money or crypto into the ecosystem; I am a truly free to play player.

What it is: Gods Unchained (GU) is a free to play (F2P), play to earn (P2E) collectible card game. It is similar to Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering.

Concept: F2P/P2E games are popular right now. The idea behind all P2E games is that as you play you earn cryptocurrency. It seems like a popular model among crypto enthusiasts and an extremely unpopular model among regular gamers. I personally feel that F2P/P2E games don't take anything away from regular paid games; instead it feels like they are targeting the market of games like DOTA or CS:GO which are F2P and rely on microtransactions for cosmetic items to generate revenue. Some P2E games like Axie are not F2P and I personally have zero interest in those games.

Rewards are paid in the form of NFT cards and GODS crypto which is the currency of GU. One GODS is currently worth around $1.10. GODS is an ERC20 token but all transactions and rewards are sent on Immutable X which is gasless ETH sidechain.

Monetization and rewards: To get started in GU you are given a set of 'welcome cards.' These cards are not NFTs and only exist within your GU account. After you play a round of this game (which typically takes 5-10 minutes) you are rewarded with some experience points. After you hit a certain number of experience points you gain a level. On each level up event you are given a pack of non-NFT cards. Each pack of cards contains five cards regardless of if they are NFTs or not.

If you win more games than you lose you will eventually gain a rank which is separate from your experience level. If you lose more games than you win you will lose a rank. When you sign up you start on rank 1, with the top rank being 12. They have creative names like Purified Iron and Auric Gold but for the purpose of this review I will be calling them rank 1 - 12.

Each week there is an event over the weekend called Weekend Ranked (WR) that runs from Friday morning to Monday morning. To qualify for the prizes awarded in this event you simply play the game. Your WR rewards are determined by two things:

1) Your starting rank when the WR event starts
2) The number of wins you are able to attain in your first 25 games

Your starting rank really matters here. The rewards on offer range from ~2 GODS up to ~8 GODS per WR event. It is possible to earn zero GODS if you don't win enough games for your starting rank. This has happened to me once out of the four WR events I've played through. The documentation for this game (both for gameplay and for rewards) is terrible and had I known how the system worked I could have avoided getting zero GODS by playing a little differently. I did spend ~30 minutes doing research on these systems before I started playing and even with that time invested I didn't find the correct info.

You can also earn packs of both NFT and non-NFT cards from WR events. At rank 9 and above it's very easy to qualify for NFT packs, though it's somewhat difficult to get to rank 9 from rank 1 quickly so players might spend a week or two without rewards. For my most recent WR rewards I have been getting two packs of NFT cards (worth $2.49 each), three packs of non-NFT cards and around four GODS tokens. This is based on my current starting rank of 9. I actually could get to rank 10 fairly easily but it's much more competitive so I choose to stay at rank 9 for more likely and more consistent rewards.

I've also gotten very lucky on cards from these packs which is how I've earned ~140 GODS tokens. It would be very easy to end up with substantially less than what I've earned given the same amount of gameplay. Additionally some players choose to retain their NFT cards instead of selling them as I do.

If you win more than 30 games total during the WR event you are given an additional reward in the form of one pack of NFT cards valued at $2.49. You can use gudecks.com to track your progress throughout the weekend.

Finally, if you end up with two of the same non-NFT cards you can spend a little bit of GODS and merge them into one NFT mint of the same card. You can then sell the NFT. I've actually made around half of my GODS via this method; some of the cards I've minted were immediately sellable for $5-10 and it feels pretty cool when that happens. Not all cards are worth minting; some of them sell for less than the cost to mint. You can use guforge.com to look at your account and determine which cards are worth minting.

The devs have said that they are planning to change how players earn GODS but they are notoriously fickle and I will believe that when I see it. They have promised a daily earning system rather than limiting GODS distribution to WR event rewards.

Gameplay: You start by making a deck out of 30 cards. There are six 'gods' in GU and each of them have their own set of cards. You can't use a nature card in a war deck, etc, but there is also a large set of neutral cards that is compatible with any god. Once you have your deck built you queue for a game with an internet opponent rando. Your deck is shuffled and you start with three cards. You then take turns drawing and playing cards.

Cards are broken up into three categories (creatures, spells and weapons, AKA relics) and many cards have creative secondary or tertiary effects. There is a ton of randomization here, and it's not uncommon to get cards you can't play at the beginning of the game.

As you learn more about the game and how to build your decks you can start to mitigate this a little but but sometimes the RNG just isn't on your side, and it's super frustrating to lose to an opponent because they pulled the exact right combo from their deck while you couldn't pull anything to stop them.

Your goal is to destroy the opponent's god. You do this by attacking it directly and the game ends once one god is dead. The player with the dead god is the loser and the player with the living god is the winner. You earn EXP regardless of this, so even losing will gain you non-NFT packs of cards.

The tutorial for the game shows the basics and is fairly thorough, though it doesn't mention the favor system which is an in-game mechanism that can make or break a game. Better documentation or a mention of favor in the tutorial would be extremely helpful.

Pros:

The game is truly F2P and as far as I can tell it is the most lucrative of all the current F2P/P2E crypto games out there

Large player base means you don't have to wait long to queue (less than 10 seconds typically)

The gameplay would be fun if it wasn't drenched in software bugs

Cards are creative in terms of design and effects

Cons:

As mentioned, the game is chock full of bugs. It is bad enough to the point that one out of every two or three games a bug happens that results in you losing or having a severe handicap. In one of my last WR games I won the game handily but then the game didn't end. My opponent was able to play and I was unable to do anything other than watch him beat me down turn after turn until he killed my god, at which point I was handed a loss. I complained to support and they essentially told me 'tough shit.' It sucked because that win would have put me over the threshold for a better prize than I have ever gotten. I felt I had invested quite a bit of time and their support response was a huge letdown.

Documentation is atrocious. The GU website is a mess and closest thing to helpful instructions to monetization are buried in their blog in the middle of a ten page wall of text. Additionally, the 'more info' button in-game takes you to an invalid link. Googlng around a little I found the correct link and I emailed their support about it. I got a generic autoresponse with no helpful info or even acknowledgement that a human had read my email. It has been one month and they have not fixed the link.

Randomness can be extremely frustrating. In a game like CS:GO or DOTA your wins and losses are not RNG-based; they are skill based. This is a problem with this type of game in general but it is more frustrating than other games because it directly affects your ability to earn crypto.

The devs themselves are pretty awful. Instead of fixing their buggy, broken mess of a game they elect to release new sets of cards very often. This creates a bunch of additional revenue for them (which is great!) but also takes focus away from the insane number of bugs that plague their game. I can honestly say that if it weren't for the free crypto and NFTs I would never, ever play a game in this state.

These devs also nerf cards quite often, so if you have spent big dollars on a high end card they can potentially change it later, most likely to make it weaker. There are countless complaints on the GU subreddit of people who have shelled out $10+ for a card only to have it become relatively worthless a week or two later. Eventually they do lock these card sets but it still sucks for card buyers. It doesn't matter to F2P players like me who sell all their NFT cards though.

Bottom line (TLDR): I believe he F2P/P2E model is here to stay and as far as that model goes this is the best game I've found. That isn't saying much however as almost all F2P/P2E games are total garbage. I think that eventually this game will shine but for now if I hadn't invested a bunch of time into it I would stay away. If the devs fix the bugs and stop being so shady with their support I will come back and review it again. It would also be nice to have them focus on gameplay; the rapid release of new cards screams cash grab to me. As it stands now Gods Unchained gets a 1.9 / 5 from me.