Yuga Labs Announces Skill-Based NFT Mint

Yuga Labs, the creative studio behind Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), has announced an expansion to its non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystem that starts with a free mint and a skill-based game.

The unique drop, which involves multiple steps, begins on Jan. 17 with a free mint for existing Bored Ape Yacht Club/Mutant Ape Yacht Club holders called Sewer Passes. These tokens are the key to unlocking a skill-based game called Dookey Dash, which opens for gameplay on Jan. 18.

Dookey Dash will be playable to anyone who holds a Sewer Pass, including those purchased on the secondary marketplace. Holders are able to play the game an unlimited amount of times, with the goal of receiving a score higher than 0 to validate their Sewer Passes and "transform them into a mysterious power source."

The results of this wacky process will reveal itself on Feb. 15 when Dookey Dash gameplay ends.

"Sewer Pass holders will compete for the highest score and earn their new power source," BAYC wrote in a series of tweets on Wednesday. "The highest single-run score on your specific Sewer Pass and accompanying wallet that achieved the run will determine what it reveals."

The team also hinted that whatever is revealed will "evolve throughout 2023" and will be used in future "battles." You can read a long explanation of the mechanics of the game here.

It's clear that this new NFT mint, which began with a silly and NSFW animated video on December 21 called "The Trial of Jimmy the Monkey," is part of Yuga's broader plans to develop an interoperable metaverse experience called "The Otherside." The platform will allow players to own land and turn their existing NFTs into playable characters.

"All of the projects that we have are deeply important to us," Wylie Aronow, one of the co-founders of Yuga Labs, told CoinDesk in an interview last month. "Where we see the Otherside is at that intersection."

According to the roadmap of Yuga Labs' latest project, NFTs created from this month-long experiment will be part of a narrative experience called "Chapter 1" at a later date.