**We’ve come a long way from children playing with their teddy bears and toys to playing games on their phones and consoles instead but what if you wanted to relive the days of playing with plushies in the modern day? Plushie Guardians is exactly that type of experience! Let’s take a look at Plushie Guardians and how it seeks to create a plushie-filled Play-to-earn game.
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Background

Described as a "narrative-rich universe filled with thematic content for multiple web3 and web2 products about plushies”, Plushie Guardians released its first installment ‘Incursions’ which pits cute animal plushies against monsters called bugaboos that are threatening their home and children. The game is built in the Polygon Network and developed by the team who also made Songs of a Hero led by Rafael Bastos. The game is going to be fully released in May 2023 for PC and will be available for mobile as well in the 2nd quarter of the same year.

Graphics and Gameplay

With the cute aesthetic that Plushie Guardians is trying to pull off, it makes sure to use graphics that would bring out the cuteness from its wide host of characters with a design that reminds me of Grand Chase. The way they are colored appears like they are painted in watercolor which amplifies the 2D effect they have. Overall the game’s colors are very bright with the exception of some bugaboos that appear dark and cloaked in shadows.

In terms of gameplay, players of Axie Infinity will find it easy to adjust to Plushie Guardians as it is also a turn-based strategy game where you need to outsmart your opponent using limited energy per move in a round although there are some differences that you’ll need to adjust to like only using two characters per team and the upgrades plushies get while inside matches which enable players to counter and adapt to their weaknesses while inside matches.

There are different mechanics that they have to keep in mind too like some of the abilities being counter spells which you can use instantaneously like trap cards in Yu-Gi-Oh. This creates a lot of dynamics in the game including the evolution mechanic which can change the tide of battles even if you are countered.

You can also equip your Plushies with Equipment to up your chances of winning PVP matches. You can farm for materials for said equipment by joining PVE raids which balances the playtime between game modes.

There wasn’t any more information about gameplay shared on their whitepaper but if you are keen about learning more, the team is active on their Discord server where they discuss the project with community members and make changes based off of their feedback.

Earning Mechanics

Plushie Guardians uses $ANIMA as its main token. The only way to generate the token is by playing the game which is different from most projects that distribute their tokens to the team and their investors. $ANIMA is burned when producing new Plushie Guardian NFTs. There are also materials that can be gathered in PVE which are also NFTs that are burned when crafting and ascending equipment. That's why PVE can also be a source of income if you just want to craft equipment to sell.

They have also mentioned plans of releasing a governance token in the future although no exact date was specified.

Final Thoughts

Given the popularity Axie Infinity once had, it is inevitable that many games will try to emulate the same field it once was in attempts to recapture the game’s market. In my opinion, Plushie Guardians has the potential to be one of the better games that can come close to Axie Infinity’s success if the developers take their time with the project.