What is Wolf Game NFT?

Play-to-earn gaming is making a scene in the NFT space, and Wolf Game NFT has the focus of many players in the space.

Wolf Game NFT is a completely on-chain, play-to-earn NFT game. Its tokenomic-based-reward system highlights what's possible between ERC-20 and ERC-721 protocols, allowing your NFT to harvest other NFTs.

Built by a brilliant, illusive developer-slash-economist known as “The Shepherd”, Wolf Game technically launched a few months ago, its original incarnation has since evolved a couple of times, and its anticipated “final” form is slated to be released sometime in the near future (March or April, perhaps) though a firm ETA remains difficult to ascertain.

While Wolf Game loyalists wait for the full game launch, The Shepherd and his team built an interim game, known as Alpha Game, that could be considered somewhat of an “appetizer” prior to the full game launch, and certainly, something that keeps the entertainment and gameplay going while engineering efforts wrap up on Wolf Game proper.

Alpha Game has been underway for a couple of weeks now, and is fascinating in its own right, based on the interplay of sheep, wolves, and $WOOL specifically. Let’s dive into Alpha Game a bit more.

The “official” whitepaper outlining the main “plot” of Alpha Game and its associated rules can be found here within the broader wolf.game website, penned by The Shepherd himself.

Importantly, the “Alpha” term in the interim game’s title is in reference to the rarest and most powerful wolf type, the Alpha 8, or “A8”, which sit at the top of the food chain, followed underneath by A7s, A6s, A5s and last but certainly not least, sheep.

Only 14 A8s exist in the game as a whole (in contrast to 304 A7s, 524 A6s, 879 A5s, and 11,975 total sheep), and in Alpha Game, the owners of these A8s play pivotal roles in the game’s core dynamics, functioning as “pack leaders” to which all other Wolf Game animal holders can stake to ultimately earn rewards come game-end.

As opposed to the other interim game format also released over Wolf Game’s evolution – Risky Game – Alpha Game is more so about animal and/or WOOL holders choosing their Alpha leaders wisely based on how the rewards will get paid out, and what sort of loyalty stakers exhibit throughout.

Although Alpha Game is the game before the launch of the real game in its' entirety, it has become a huge success being that it's extremely entertaining and competitive.

While technically the “game before the game” Alpha Game has created its own competitive fervor, with the 14 teams jockeying intensely to earn the trust (and stakes) of as many Wolf Game asset holders as possible.

As one OG Wolf Game personality, Farmer Ron, eloquently put it, the gameplay dynamics being experienced sum up to a “modern combination of Monopoly, Catan, Chess, Clue, Battleship & Risk.”

Part of this competitiveness comes from the fact that there is 500 million $WOOL at stake in Alpha Game, to be paid out in the form of Wool Pouches to staked players post-game (in proportion to their staked contribution to their team(s) of choice), which has a current value of approximately $100 million dollars!

As of this writing, the price of WOOL is hovering around $0.20, though at the start of Alpha Game, skyrocketed up as high as $0.50 per $WOOL as players scrambled to buy up assets to stake at the game’s start.

The Alphas (A8 leaders) head out to attack other packs while strengthening their own, armed with the force of the wolves and sheep traveling with them and the WOOL they have amassed. The more WOOL they and their pack earn, the better their planning, strategy, and execution.

​​The aim of Alpha Game is for each pack to amass as many points as possible. Packs will be granted WOOL based on their points total as well as a number of unique events.

The Alpha Game has a prize pool of 500,000,000 WOOL. Alpha Wolves lead packs of wolves and sheep to victory and reap the benefits of a WOOL reward. Sheep and wolves decide which pack they want to join. 

Packs with a higher percentage of sheep and wolves gain more points in the game. Packs gain actions by staking WOOL, which they may employ to attack and fortify. The more WOOL invested in a pack, the faster it earns actions.

An Alpha Wolf can choose to stake and lead a pack until a date set by The Shepherd (the creator). An Alpha does not have the choice of abandoning its pack and cannot unstake until the Alpha Game is over.

You can check the current Alpha Game scoreboard here.

At any moment throughout the game, all non-Alpha wolves and sheep can stake and join a single Alpha's Pack.

In exchange for their efforts to develop and preserve their pack, the Alpha in each pack will get 5 percent of their pack's gains.

When the game ends, the remaining 95 percent of a pack's WOOL earnings will be claimable by individual wallet addresses in proportion to the contributions they made to the Pack that they are a member of.

A player's contribution to their pack is weighted 50 percent by the number of points obtained from staking sheep or wolves, and 50 percent by the quantity and length of WOOL staked. 

For example, if a player contributed 2 percent of their pack's points and 3 percent of their pack's WOOL, they would get 2.5 percent of their pack's WOOL prize. 

NOTE: When a player unstakes a sheep or wolf or moves it to another pack, the NFT's points are reset to zero, and any WOOL attributed to it from its previous pack is forfeited.

Similarly, when a player unstakes or changes WOOL to another pack, any WOOL profits related to that WOOL from the previous Pack are forfeited.

Alphas can get points for their pack by encouraging other wolves and sheep to stake into their pack. A wolf or sheep may only be a member of one pack at a time. They may, however, swap packs at any time for a fee.

Each sheep or wolf staked in a pack gives a set number of points to its pack on a daily basis.

Each action may be put to two different uses:

1. Attack another pack of their choosing, reducing that pack's total points count by 3 percent unless they have fortifications.

2. Strengthen your defenses against attacks. Fortification is a proactive measure and you can increase your fortifications by fortifying.

If a pack has no fortifications, attacks against it will diminish the pack's points by 3 percent. There is no limit to how many fortifications a pack may have.

Packs gain actions by staking $WOOL. When a pack earns an action, the alpha of the pack must execute an action before the pack may earn more actions. A pack cannot stockpile actions since it can only carry one unused action at a time.

The game will last for as long as the Wolf Game development period takes, and will conclude when The Shepherd decides. The Shepherd will advise all packs ahead of time of both special events and the game's conclusion so that they can plan accordingly.

Moreover, once the full game is released there will be additional assets available that aren't currently in the Alpha Game such as LAND and FARMERS.

This information was gathered directly from the Alpha Game Whitepaper where you can find even more details regarding the game.  Also, make sure to check out the Alpha Game community over in their Discord for more information and strategy.