After thorough investigation reading the Whitepaper and listening to the recordings of some AMAs of the Taunt Battleworld Team, this is my review.

Taunt Battleworld is the first Engage-to-Earn NFT fighting game simulator on the Polygon Blockchain. It is referred as Engage-to-earn, because the “player” has three different ways to earn, rather than just playing the game. The first is Play-to-Earn, the second is Watch-to-earn and the third is Predict-to-earn. The game consists of two Acolyte warriors fighting in a simulation. That means that the player has no actual participation on the fighting part, it is fully controlled by a fighting engine, built on Unity. As my good friend @Rekt Winnypeg suggested, “think of it as a fancy Royal Rumble” but 1:1 with visual graphics and fighting techniques, plus you need a NFT to participate. You have absolutely NO effect on how the fight proceeds. The Team has mentioned that later on, the player will be able to “train” his/her warrior to raise his skills and get prepared for the fights.

Play-2-Earn: The player mints a skullpass (an Acolyte warrior) and can participate in different designed Tournaments. The player can win prizes (like NFTs etc) or in game items (with the ability to increase his/her warriors skills)

Watch-2-Earn: The player can simply watch the brawls, learn, and win prizes

Predict-to-earn: The player can participate in live prediction contests, using the knowledge acquired by watching and therefore, win NFT and other prizes.

The game consists of two Acolyte warriors fighting in a simulation. That means that the player has no actual participation on the fighting part, it is fully controlled by a fighting engine, built on Unity.

The X Factor: Being a fighting simulating game, means there is little-to-non participation of the player. You can easily mint some skullpasses (aka Warriors) with different skills and just participate in various tournaments without actually needing any preparation time/effort. Time and $ commitment: As stated above, not much time is needed for the actual participation, BUT when the game is fully evolved, more time will be needed to study the different tournaments and the warriors/runes. The team has mentioned that there will be more than enough different fighting styles/traits/attributes as well as tournaments, so the player would need to devote more time to study the different traits.

As far as the cost, the Skullpass (only 2500 will exist) that give the player some benefits (https://skullpass.playtaunt.io/), cost 0.1 ETH + gas fees. (At the time of writing, there is one warrior listed for 0.06 ETH in opensea). The goal is to have 25000 warriors from 5 different races.

Team & Capabilities: The Team consists of industry veterans from Amazon, EA, and Unity. The founders have been in the gaming sector for more than 10 years, while the other members of the tem appear to have at least 6 years of experience in their respective fields. They are not so active in the discord, but Moderators are there almost all times of the day. According to their resumes and AMAs, they appear capable of delivering what promised.

Lore & Storytelling: The Lore is a cliché story. The Game is based on a Post-Apocalyptic world in the far future, where humanity managed to travel across the stars and encounter multiple civilizations. One of them, known as The Old Gods, directed their own followers to go to Earth, attack, claim it and eventually, make it their own Battleworld. As in the most similar stories, humankind is not easily eradicated so the Old Gods decided to bring cruel warriors from their worlds, in order to fight humans in eternal tournaments of blood and death. All these warriors, bring knowledge, technology and weapons to humankind, which try to survive and arise from the ashes of civilization. As the White paper concludes “Some seek the path to survival, others seek glory, and, in the twisted darkness, there are those who seek chaos. In the end, who will remain and claim dominance of the new world?” Comment: The story is not something new as a concept, although I personally like the Old Gods reference and the earth transformed to a battleground. I want to see how the 5 races concept will roll out, mostly how they will affect the different fighting styles as the game proceeds.

Quality of Communication: The Team does frequent AMAs/Twitter Spaces together with projects they collaborate (Rekt Wolf, DystopAI, Hellcats, Oneplanet from those we are familiar with). The discord is not quite active, but not quiet either. The tournaments are frequent enough, and this is communicate in Twitter and Discord

Timeline & Delivery: The game is still on development stage, although it has been released, as promised on the roadmap. It is early to say of the team over- or under-delivers, but as of now, whatever is on the Roadmap, has been delivered.

Utility: The SkullPass mint, has the utility of participating in all the available tournaments. Moreover, it has some more benefits as is bonus multipliers in tournaments and engage to earn, ability to test gameplay features, first access opportunities to future NFT drops etc

Art or Graphic design: The art is well developed. It is fitted for the “alien post apocalyptic battleground” concept. Emphasis has been given to the fighting moves/techniques more than the actual art itself. People should have this in mind, more than the artistic part of the NFT.

Game Design: The game design is good. The engine is built on Unity. I personally liked the concept of strategically “train” and “prepare” your fighter (in a later time, when training is available) rather than having a direct impact in the game like every other fighting game in existence (Mortal Komat, Street Fighter, Tekken etc)

Wolf Score: B+. Although it is still early, the team has been active (mostly in spaces/AMAs) and have deliver almost everything they promised. The game is fun and really easy to use. The price is a little bit salty in this bear market (around 160 $ +fees at the time of writing). There is still a lot of time for development and evolvement.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/playtaunt Website: https://www.playtaunt.io/ whitepaper: https://taunt-battleworld.gitbook.io/taunt-battleworld/ Discord: https://discord.gg/JrqS8jhE