decrypt.co
If you're looking to bank a little bit of Bitcoin while playing fun mobile games, there are loads of free play-to-earn iOS and Android games that pay satoshis (1/100,000,000 BTC) while you play and view ads. Not all of them are worth the hassle, but we’ve recommended some that we like.
One of them is SpaceY, an amusing asteroid-mining game from Fumb Games that pays out Bitcoin as you skip across the galaxy to harvest resources. It’s simple and straightforward, but there’s a bit of strategy in the mix—ways to boost your earnings by taking advantage of every opportunity that pops up along the way.
Unlike Fumb’s own Bitcoin Miner, SpaceY doesn’t provide as many direct opportunities to earn more Bitcoin. But if you play smart, you’ll be able to stack up more satoshis without spending any real money. Here are seven tips to help you do just that.
Tap those satoshis
This is the easiest tip on the list. Every so often, while mining an asteroid, an alert will flash on the screen, and an orange satoshi icon will slowly float along the path between your mining outposts and your space cruiser. You’ll typically have several seconds or more to claim it, so just tap the icon and grab that satoshi.
It might be worth a fraction of a penny’s worth of Bitcoin, but hey, those satoshis add up over time—a lot of time.
Upgrade your ships
You’ll earn in-game coins for opening the game each day, for mining asteroids, for randomized events that pop up along the way, and for completing other tasks. Those coins will pile up, but there’s really no reason to sit on them. Instead, use them to upgrade your mining outposts. That will enable your outposts to mine asteroids faster, and each mined asteroid earns you a single satoshi. In other words, better outposts equals more Bitcoin earnings.
There’s a little bit of strategy to consider here. If you’re actively playing a lot—that is, keeping the game on your screen and playing for more than a moment at a time—then you might want a balanced fleet of mining outposts that all pull resources from asteroids at roughly the same rate. But if you’re someone who will hop in and play for a minute and then come back later, then you may just want to focus on upgrading one or two outposts and making them super efficient.
Claim the daily reward
Playing daily is the best way to maintain earning momentum in SpaceY, as there’s a daily login reward—and the rewards get better with each consecutive day you play. While you won’t directly get any free Bitcoin from these rewards, you can get a huge stash of in-game coins, purple “credits” that you can use to buy coins and other boosts, as well as boxes that contain powerful augments to improve your mining outposts. These will all help you earn more BTC.
Use your augments
Augments are upgrades that can supercharge your mining outposts, improving their mining speed and efficiency along with other stats. And there are multiple levels of augments, ranging from a puny 2% improvement to a massive 1,000% boost. Make sure that you not only use the augments you have to improve your ships but also actively try to gain more.
You can unlock more augments by spending the purple credits you amass over time to buy boxes of augments in the shop. You can also trade up multiple lesser augments to unlock more powerful ones. The advantages can be huge, so don’t overlook this feature.
Pursue the alerts
Every so often, a red “alert” button will flash on the screen. Tapping that reveals some sort of story prompt—for example, a civilian ship is being attacked by raiders, or you’ve encountered a cluster of asteroids and meteors that could be mined. Take ‘em or leave ‘em.
Sometimes you’ll earn rewards from engaging with these—such as coins or augments. Sometimes you won’t earn anything. But there’s no apparent downside to engaging with these pop-up prompts. Even if the text says that the attempt went awry or that ships were destroyed in the process, we’ve never seen any tangible downside represented in the game. So even if they’re random and repetitive, you might as well engage with them and hope for rewards.
Watch the ads
Unlike in Bitcoin Miner, the ads in SpaceY are entirely optional—at least as of this writing. That’s much different than most of these play-to-earn Bitcoin games. But as with most free-to-play mobile games, there are real advantages to watching the video ads. And if you can stomach them, then you can make some serious progress here by watching them.
Why watch the video ads in SpaceY? Doing so can supercharge a boost that speeds up your mining capabilities, for example, or double the rewards you earn when logging in. Sometimes, watching an ad will also earn you VIP points, which can be spent to buy larger-scale game upgrades—such as boosting the number of coins earned while you’re offline, or extending how long the “x2 Speed” perks last.
Start over—no, really!
This might not seem logical, but SpaceY gives you the option to essentially start the game over and go back to the first sector, keeping some of the benefits you’ve amassed on your journey while significantly boosting your in-game coin earnings. It’s called a “Temporal Jump,” and is akin to a “New Game+” mode in some video games.
While it’s true that you’ll have to start the quest over again and replay past sectors, the truth is that every sector in the game (that we’ve played, at least) is more or less the same, aside from minor variables. You’re probably not going to be playing this game to explore the galaxy; you’re playing it because it’s a simple, fun diversion that pays you a bit of Bitcoin along the way. You’ll earn Bitcoin faster by triggering this Temporal Jump every so often.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.