How to Create an NFT Game: A Step-By-Step Guide to the Essentials?

Anyone who started to go through this article must have already heard about the Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Based upon blockchain technology has already penetrated various niches as a unique way to process transactions. It has particularly revolutionized monetization through NFT games. As per a DapRadar report, the NFT-based transaction volume had already crossed $10.67 billion until the beginning of last year. Undoubtedly, a significant portion of this transaction volume belongs to NFT games. 

NFT games opened a floodgate of opportunities for a mobile game development company to market its creative and intellectual properties in a secure and protected manner. Do you want to secure a slice of this growth story of NFT game apps? Do you want to develop a successful NFT game? Let us provide here a step-by-step guide to building NFT games. But before that, let us explain what NFT is and how does NFT games work. 

What is called NFT?

NFT is the abbreviation of Non-Fungible Token, which is nothing but a cryptographic token based on blockchain technology. These tokens represent specific and unique digital items such as digital artworks and collectibles, different types of certifications, game characters, and in-game design attributes.  

The non-fungible tokens, as they are called, each NFT represents a unique value and cannot be interchanged like other currencies, tokens, or coins. Each NFT is unique and comes with unique meta descriptions. 

What is an NFT Game?

NFT games, by incorporating NFTs, help represent unique game attributes such as game rewards or any other unique game items such as game characters, game skins, etc. 

Players of such games can not only get their rewards through NFTs but the unique game characters can also be marketed through NFTs. This is how NFT games brought the "pay as you earn" philosophy into the gaming space in a big way.

A Comprehensive Step by Step Guide to Develop an NFT Game

Now that we have explained the definition and key value propositions of the NFT games, let's provide a detailed step-by-step guide to developing NFT game apps.  

Step 1: Having a great NFT game idea 

To begin with, you need to concentrate on the type of NFT game you want to develop. Are you going to build a strategy game or just a puzzle, roleplaying, or adventure game? It would help if you decided on this first. 

Based on the type of game you want to develop, research what model goes right with this kind of game. Study several similar games and come out with something more engaging and unique to grab the attention of your target player audience. 

Step 2: Accommodate creative design. 

Since NFT games are known for using NFT for representing creative and artistic game elements and characters for commercial uses, you need to make space for creative game characters and game skin design. The game development and design team must have experienced and skilled 2D or 3D graphical artists. 

Step 3: Decide between Web App or Mobile App

Now it is time to choose the type of platform for which you want to build the game. Do you like to build it as a Web App or a Mobile App? That is the important thing to decide here? Let's not forget; that there are pros and cons on both sides.

If you build your NFT game as a web app, it would be accessible to more people without time, place, and device constraints. Web apps can also be played directly over the internet without downloading. 

On the other hand, by building a mobile NFT game app, you can ensure a more engaging custom mobile-specific user experience and features. With mobile platforms, you have a lot of freedom in offering a more engaging and interactive gaming experience. But for mobile apps, you need to build two separate apps, such as Android and iOS, which involves higher development costs. 

Step 4: Decide the appropriate tech stack. 

The success of an app primarily depends upon two things, the right tech stack and expert developers. For building an NFT game app, this cannot be otherwise. For building a high-performance NFT game, you need to choose the right frontend, backend, wallet, and smart contract technology. 

Some of the tested and tried technologies for NFT game projects include Unity3d, ASP.NET Core, C #, MySQL, MongoDB, Truffle Suite, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and several others. You also need to make use of various operating systems based upon your target platforms like iOS, Android, Web, Windows, Linux, macOS, etc. Truffle Suite is a popular environment to help your NFT app connect to popular blockchains like Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric, etc. 

Step 5: Frontend development 

To program the front end of the NFT app, you can use either JavaScript or TypeScript. You can choose ReactJS, VueJS, or Angular for frontend development frameworks. Angular is considered a bad frontend choice because of its complexity and larger footprint. 

Step 6: Integrate a Wallet

The NFT app project for login and authentication purposes needs to integrate a cryptocurrency wallet. This will help you store tokens in a digitally secure and accessible manner. MetaMask offers a non-custodial wallet leaving the responsibilities of keys with you instead of a third party. It also allows integrating with the browser through a plugin. 

Step 7: Establishing communication with Smart contract

To provide the NFT URL to the users, the frontend needs to retrieve the user address from the wallet and send it to the Smart Contract. To establish communication with Blockchain-based Smart Contract, you can use the Web library's popular library. This library can also customize transactions based on users. 

Smart Contracts generally define all the underlying rules, responsibilities, and roles of NFT Games. Smart Contracts are taking part in the Ethereum Blockchain use languages such as Vyper, Solidity, Yul, etc. Regarding coding the Smart Contracts, NFT game developers mostly use Solidity, a language very similar to JavaScript. Developers more accustomed to coding in Python can consider using Vyper as their language. 

Since this part of development requires some prior experience and project exposure, developers with less knowledge should always stick to popular languages like Solidify. With such a popular choice, they can easily access a lot of learning resources on GitHub and other platforms. Finally, Yul suits experienced developers working on smart contract projects for some time. 

Step 8: Backend Development 

Back-end development is extremely important in an NFT game app project because SmartContract will only make requests for the NFT URL. After all, the entire NFT with big metadata will be too heavy for storing in the Blockchain. The backend of the NFT game app is responsible for providing the metadata to request the Smart Contract further.

Since NFT game apps relying on the Blockchain database technology works in a decentralized manner, maintaining centralized data access through the app's backend will ruin the key value propositions of this decentralized database technology. To ensure a smooth link between the data off Blockchain and data on Blockchain, many NFT apps use a technology called Chainlink. 

Node.js is a great choice for the back-end programming language because of its scalability, small footprint, and expressive code. NodeJS is already considered to be a powerful and robust framework for backend development. 

Step 9: Testing the app 

You need to test your NFT game app by using the right tool. To test the NFT game app, there are several great choices of tools. You can use the Rinkeby or Ropsten Testnet for testing the app. Some developers also prefer creating a mock blockchain for testing purposes. Truffle provides Ganache, a tool used by some developers expressly for this purpose. 

Step 10: Deploy the app and reach out to a wider audience. 

Finally, you have designed, developed, and tested the app, and it is ready for launching in the market. Now for the deployment of the NFT game, there is a small stage of preparation for the mainnet. In the testing deployment phase of the app, it is always advisable to avoid rushing out. Make sure to be vigilant in finding and testing the security glitches. 

Wrapping Up 

NFT games have already made a niche presence in the market, creating huge opportunities for game developers. Now, game projects, thanks to NFTs, can focus more on marketing unique and creative game attributes, characters, and design elements. But for realizing the advantages of NFT, it is important to stick to the wheel of time-tested development practices first. This is exactly what this step-by-step guide tried to explore and explain.