Yuga Labs, the creators of Bored Apes Yacht Club, yesterday released the first season of HV-MTL Forge, a workshop-building game revolving around HV-MTL (Heavy Metal) robot NFTs. HV-MTL Forge is “a mix between a pet game and a casual world builder”, leading to a final dungeon crawler competition.

Following Dookey Dash, the mini-game “Lick The Toad”, and the burning event “The Summoning”, HV-MTL Forge is the fourth stage of the second game enterprise by Yuga Labs after the launch of the Otherside metaverse adventure.

The game announcement on June 20 ended the frenzy amongst the community, that had been looking forward to knowing what the future held for their HV-MTL NFTs. This collection of 30,000 NFTs was released in March during “The Summoning”, a process in which the owners of the Sewer Pass NFT, the digital collectibles used to access Dookey Dash, “summoned” a Power Source that enacted a burning mechanism and released “Evo 1” Mech robots.

After holding on to the HV robots for the last three months, players can now use them to advance towards the next phase of the game.

“Your mission: help HV unlock its next evolution.”

"Your HV relies on you to get rare upgrades and evolve into an Evo2.” In HV-MTL Forge, the robots take centre stage as dynamic NFTs that evolve based on players’ decisions between eight different HV-Types and numerous different trait combinations.

While keeping HV happy and energised, players build the “ultimate forge” by crafting workshops and displaying their architectural skills to the community. According to the game’s website, “daily voting by other HV holders will determine your seasonal leaderboard ranking.”

Any HV that participates in a season will win rare attributes, named AMPs, but the more votes you have, the more unique your AMP will be. It is also possible to unlock unique construction sketches by partaking in thrilling quests.

The game will last for six seasons; you can get an AMP in each. You will need at least three for your Evo to upgrade, allowing you to join the next phase.

Dookey Dash Spin-Off

Dookey Dash was a three-week endless race game released at the beginning of the year by Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Apes Yacht Club, which could mint Sewer Pass NFTs to fuel their races.

The exclusivity of the game and Yuga Labs’ status in the Web3 ecosystem made Dookey Dash the most popular game on Web3 - it was played by 25,000 gamers totaling 706,000 hours of gameplay. Before launching, Sewer Pass mints reached $10 million, while in the final balance, the game made $110 million worth of NFT trades.

The winner of the competition was Fortnite veteran player Mongraal, who was awarded a Golden Key that he later sold for 1,000 ETH (around $ 1.6 million at the time of sale.)

The story continued in March with Lick The Toad and the Summoning. Players can now re-immerse themselves in the narrative by playing HV-MTL Forge.

Yuga Labs

Yuga Labs has been at the forefront of digital collectibles since the release of BAYC on Ethereum in 2021, which went on to become the most notorious digital art collection of Web3.

Its move into the Web3 game scene has also been a success, with experts calling Dookey Dash a revolution in play-to-earn games. However, the market doesn’t seem as excited about Yuga Labs’ new enterprise.

The floor price of BAYC has dropped below 40 ETH for the first time since November 2021, and it is now sitting around 37 ETH ($70,000). The floor price of Mutants is close to 7.5 ETH, while Otherdeeds and HV-MTL prices are down as well.

Some external factors might be causing the downturn, such as the negative effects of the regulatory crackdown on the NFT market and whale activity increasing supply with no corresponding increase in demand.

However, some blame the inner dynamics of the BAYC ecosystem as the cause for the price dip. The value of art collections is greatly dependent on how rare they are perceived to be. As innovative as the expansion into games by Yuga Labs might be, it dilutes the power of the original collection.

HV-MTL is an independent storyline, meaning that for the first time in the history of BAYC, no monkey or mutant is necessarily called into action. According to Bored Ape collector JBond, this ecosystem fragmentation might be another aspect to factor in when looking at the current price level.

Whether or not the expansion of the Yuga Labs ecosystem will cause its assets' devaluation is too soon to tell. For now, all we can do is play and Observe.

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