If you want to play a game that mimics Logan Paul’s vision for CryptoZoo, now you can. An indie game developer by the name of Yipy has released a game he calls RealZoo—for free, and without any crypto elements.
In a video, Yipy said he managed to develop and release RealZoo in just “a few hours.” RealZoo allows users to login using a Gmail account and are immediately granted tokens for free to spend on eggs, which hatch into random animals. Those animals can then be bred into hybrid animals or “burned” to make more tokens.
But those tokens aren’t on any blockchain, and can’t be cashed out for any real value. In RealZoo, users passively earn tokens the longer they hold onto their animals—but more impatient players can buy tokens using a credit card if they want to hatch more eggs faster.
An animal-breeding game was also the vision for CryptoZoo—a project Paul has struggled to deliver on since early 2021. Paul, however, is not like RealZoo. marketed the NFT-based game as “a really fun game that makes you money.”
Paul got himself into yet another controversy, when YouTubers criticized him. Coffeezilla released a three-part series alleging that Paul’s blockchain game CryptoZoo was little more than an elaborate scam. The project sold NFTs, ZOO tokens to investors. However, the game has yet to be released.
RealZoo is the same. Decrypt It was tested: The signup and login process was simple, the breeding process was immediate, and the art is arguably better than Paul’s photoshopped images.
“Now if you just had a criminal record, you’d be qualified to go work for Logan Paul,” Coffeezilla jokingly told Yipy in response to his RealZoo video.
So what’s CryptoZoo’s excuse for ghosting its social media channels since the spring of 2022 and struggling to finish development on what appears to be a simple enough, browser-based card game with a crypto token? Zach Kelling, a former CryptoZoo engineer, said one. Decrypt via direct message that his team of 30 engineers are owed $1 million for their work on CryptoZoo—and only then will they turn over the game they developed to Paul and his team.
“So far, we have all been scammed,” Kelling told Decrypt His experience with CryptoZoo.
Paul refutes these claims. He stated in a video reply to Coffeezilla this week that the CryptoZoo gaming platform is still being developed and that he intends to sue the YouTuber. He also said he doesn’t believe Kelling actually employed 30 engineers to build the code for the game but rather just three. Jeffrey Levin, Paul’s manager has yet to respond. Decrypt’s previous requests for comment.
RealZoo is a modest success. But could it have been done in the same time frame with crypto elements?
According to a veteran in the videogame industry for 30 years, it is not true. He is currently developing a Web3-based game. He spoke to Decrypt under the condition that anonymity is maintained so as to not be embroiled in ongoing Logan Paul controversy.
A blockchain game—or any game, for that matter—could take anywhere from months to years to develop depending on its complexity, he said. But Web3 elements, like a wallet connection feature or NFT assets, “take significant time” to build properly.
The cost of making a Web3-game can vary greatly. A AAA shooter can easily run into the millions while a 2D game of cards could cost much less.
“It’s the Wild West and there’s a lot of experimentation,” the developer said of the Web3 gaming landscape. “We’re making it up as we go.”