Reviewed by the CryptoGames editorial team. Last updated October 2026. This page may show ads; they never change a score. This review is informational and not financial advice: tokens and NFTs are volatile and you can lose everything you spend.
Cost to start: 10.2 RON (about $0.61) for the cheapest Axie item (as of 2026-10-21) · Latest update: Nightmare axie sales up 84% ahead of Terrariums’ first Halloween event (2026-10-19)
Axie Infinity at a glance
| Genre | Card, Casual, MMORPG, Multiplayer, Strategy |
|---|---|
| Blockchain | Ronin, Ethereum |
| Developer | Sky Mavis |
| Status | Live |
| Token | AXS |
| Cost to start | 10.2 RON (about $0.61) for the cheapest Axie item (as of 2026-10-21) |
| Last major update | Nightmare axie sales up 84% ahead of Terrariums’ first Halloween event (2026-10-19) |
| Our ranking | #1 |
Axie Infinity has its own page in our games catalog, and you can compare it with every other title in our ranked list of crypto games.
What you earn and how: Axie Infinity is pay-to-start play-to-earn. Earning runs through Axies, which are NFTs on the Ronin chain, and the cheapest Axie listed at 10.2 RON, about $0.61, as of 2026-10-21. Land is the large entry cost: the Axie Land floor was 84,495 RON as of 2026-10-21. AXS itself traded at $1.06 as of 2026-10-21.
How we researched this review
This is a research-based review, not a play log: nobody on our team claims hours in Axie Infinity here. We read our catalog entry, the whitepaper and docs, the official gameplay guides and store listings, 8 forum or blog pages, the public Telegram and X channels, the official marketplace and getting-started guide, the official update history and news coverage, token market data, NFT market data, team, funding and audit records (read on 2026-10-21). Every price, count and size in this review carries the date of its own reading where the source gives one. Forum posts, community chats and docs pages often carry no date: those sources are undated, and each one is linked where we use it so you can check it yourself.
What is Axie Infinity?
Axie Infinity is a blockchain strategy game from Sky Mavis. You collect, breed and battle fantasy creatures called Axies, and each Axie is an NFT that you own outright and can trade or sell. The game combines team building and card battles with collectible ownership. It is listed under card, casual, MMORPG, multiplayer and strategy games.
Axie Infinity’s home chain is Ronin, an Ethereum sidechain built for the game, and Ethereum is still used for moving assets. The Ronin mainnet launched in February 2021, Axies migrated to it in April 2021 and the RON token launched in January 2022. The game’s own token is AXS, an ERC-20 governance token that holders can stake and that players can also earn in various Axie games.
In Axie Infinity, you put together a team of Axies and take it into turn-based, card-driven fights against other players. Each Axie’s body parts decide which cards it brings to the fight. Breeding produces new Axies from ones you already hold, and you can field them or sell them. For players, battles can win leaderboard prizes and Smooth Love Potions (SLP), and rare Axies such as Mystics and Origins can be collected and traded.
Axie Infinity is live. Axie Infinity: Origins was approved on Google Play in December 2022 and launched on the App Store for iOS in select countries in May 2023. Community builders make games for Axie Infinity too: Axie DoLL, the first Builder’s Program game, was added to App.axie in December 2022.
Gameplay experience
Axie Infinity plays as a turn-based card battler. Around those fights sits a loop of collect, breed and battle. Every Axie is an NFT, so the creatures you own are the same units you send into combat.
How a match plays
Battles use a side-on camera, with your three Axies on the left facing the opponent’s team on the right. Health bars sit above each creature, player names and portraits run along the top, and a round counter sits at top centre.
Each round, you pick cards from your Axies’ hands, a row of colourful cards along the bottom of the screen. A pink energy counter sits in the lower-left corner, and a red End Turn button locks in your choices.
Your chosen cards stack at top centre, where the opponent’s picks also appear, and enlarged previews show above the Axies before the round resolves. In Origins, a dark overlay can also ask which cards to keep in hand, with tooltip text and Cancel and Submit buttons.
When the cards resolve, you get purple claw bursts, blue water splashes, poison clouds and green healing glows. Red damage numbers pop up, along with floating labels such as ‘Gain Energy’, ‘CRITICAL’ or a damage buff.
A fallen Axie turns into a translucent green ghost that stays on the field while the others keep fighting, sometimes with a ‘YOU ARE DEAD’ badge over it. In the late rounds ghosts fill most of the field and only a few Axies remain on each side. A won match ends on a golden VICTORY banner with crossed swords, and the next match opens with a waiting-for-opponent banner and a timer.
Modes
Axie Infinity: Origins has two main battle modes and a friendly one. Arena is player-versus-player, Ranked grants rewards for a high leaderboard rank, and Friendly Duels are unranked matches against players on your friends list. The same battle mechanics apply to every Arena option.
A W3Gamer season report said Origins Season 16 began on January 21, 2026 with the previous setup carried over and no balance shifts.
Axie Classic uses the same side-on, three-against-three card layout.
Progression and difficulty
Breeding produces new Axies with particular body-part combinations, and you can keep the offspring for battle or sell them. Axies are tradable, so you can buy into a roster, expand it or sell it at any point, and team-building becomes an economic choice as well as a tactical one.
The skill ceiling in Axie Infinity sits in card choice. In the words of a BingX explainer, “Matches reward skill, sequencing, and synergy rather than reaction speed.” A Coinranking review from July 1, 2026 said you need strategy and planning to beat other players.
Controls and platforms
Outside battle, the world is an isometric snowy map where pastel Axies stand with name tags above them. Story scenes put a rounded dialogue box along the bottom of the screen.
Atia’s Legacy runs on iOS, Android and PC, and you start a fight there by equipping a weapon and clicking Find Match.
Getting started
The main game is on Google Play for Android, and the same listing covers Windows. The game as a card battler with stylized cartoon art, rated PEGI 3, with 100K+ downloads.
The download is free and gives you a team of starter Axies at no cost, so you can start battling without buying RON, tokens or NFTs. If you want to go beyond the starters, the cheapest Axie on OpenSea cost 10.2 RON, about $0.61, as of October 21, 2026.
The game runs on Ronin. Account data, badges and bAXS are moving from Waypoint accounts to Ronin Stash. To start:
- Follow the official onboarding guide at welcome.axie.tech.
- Build your free team of starter Axies, then pick Arena or Ranked in Origins, or a Friendly Duel with a friend.
- For Atia’s Legacy, download it from App.axie (on iOS, install TestFlight first). Sign in with your email and an invite code, talk to Mei in the Town Hall and select PvP Combat.
Graphics, art and sound
Axie Infinity uses bright, pastel 2D cartoon art, and its battles are easy to read. The weak spot is stability.
Art style and world
The art is whimsical, with hand-painted backdrops behind the fights. Axie Classic arenas use a soft palette of teal, yellow and sandy beige, set in front of stone ruins and leafy trees under a light blue sky. Not every Classic arena is sunny.
Characters and animation
The Axies are round-bodied with oversized eyes, and they bounce around the battlefield. In Origins they’re chubby and come in pink, green, blue and purple.
In an Origins fight, a pink beam hits a purple enemy Axie while ghostly green shapes hang in the middle of the arena. Late in a fight, green spirits fill the field and only a few Axies are still standing.
Interface and menus
Bold, icon-driven cues make it easy to follow what’s happening in a fight. The Classic lobby shows three blob-like Axies on a jungle backdrop, with a menu down the left side, currency icons along the top and a large yellow PLAY button at the bottom right.
In Classic, energy counters sit on the left and right edges of the screen, and the card hand sits in a dark tray along the bottom. Shield numbers appear next to each creature’s health bar.
A win fills the screen with an orange overlay, a large golden VICTORY banner and a crossed-sword emblem.
Performance and stability
Players complain that cards freeze mid-match and that the app asks for an update that never shows up.
Economy and earning reality
Axie Infinity pays very little in token rewards. Classic mode no longer pays AXS, and AXS traded at $1.01 as of October 21, 2026, against an all-time high of $164.90 on November 6, 2021. Any AXS you earn is worth a sliver of what the same amount fetched at the 2021 peak.
How rewards are earned
AXS is an ERC-20 governance token that players can also earn in games across the Axie universe and through user-generated content initiatives. Holders who stake, play and vote in governance can claim rewards. Breeding new Axies with particular body-part combinations, collecting rare Mystics and Origins, creating art and content, and bringing newcomers into the game earn resources.
Classic mode’s rewards switched from AXS to bAXS, and a new 7,000 bAXS bounty board pays its prize pool in bAXS too. That pool keeps players interested, if only barely. Every reward needs Axies, because Axie NFTs work as tickets that grant access to all current and future experiences built on the Axie IP.
Sinks, supply and resale
Each Axie NFT marketplace transaction sends 4.25% to the Community Treasury, and so does the AXS portion of every breeding fee. The AXS paid for gameplay comes from a fixed allocation that runs down as it pays out.
As of October 21, 2026, about 175.6 million AXS were in circulation out of a 270 million maximum, for a market cap of $185 million against a fully diluted value of $285 million.
Reselling Axie assets is harder than the floor prices suggest. Axie Land has a floor of 84,495 RON and 3,721 owners, yet its all-time volume on OpenSea is only 398.97 RON. Consumable items sit at a floor of 0.24 RON.
AXS token review
| Ticker | AXS |
|---|---|
| Price | $1.01 |
| Past 24 hours | ▼ 4.7% |
| Past 7 days | ▼ 0.8% |
| Market cap | $176.89 million |
| 24h volume | $30.63 million |
| Fully diluted value | $271.98 million |
| Circulating supply | 175,597,599.67 |
| Max supply | 270,000,000 |
| All-time high | $164.90 (2021-11-06) |
Full live price page on cryptogames.gg: AXS price, chart and market data.
AXS is 99.4% below its all-time high of $164.90, set on November 6, 2021. Holders have lost almost all of the token’s peak value.
What AXS does in the game
AXS is an ERC-20 governance token for the Axie universe, and holders can claim rewards for staking, playing and voting in governance. The token was designed with Delphi Digital. Gameplay issuance drops over time, and the Community Treasury, funded by fees from Axie Infinity, is named as a possible way to keep holders staking.
The AXS governance plan says gameplay issuance will eventually run out and need topping up from the Treasury and from sponsors. In the current phase, Sky Mavis manages the ecosystem fund and the Community Treasury sits dormant. To reach the next phase, an Axie game needs over 10 million daily active users and average weekly growth of 5% for 6 consecutive months. Until a game hits that bar, holders get trial votes and non-binding referendums, and Sky Mavis keeps control of the money.
Market data and dilution
As of October 21, 2026, AXS had a market cap of $185.4 million and a fully diluted value of $285 million, which is 1.5 times the market cap. On that date the price was up 1.9% in 24 hours and down 4.5% over 7 days, and $35 million of AXS changed hands in 24 hours.
NFT review
| Collection | Chain | Items | Owners | Floor | 7-day volume (that marketplace) | As of |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Axie Land | Ronin | 16,887 | 3,721 | 84,495 RON | 2.24 RON | 2026-10-21 |
| Axie Consumable Item | Ronin | 2,539,816 | 44,792 | 0.24 RON | 3.93 RON | 2026-10-21 |
| Axie | Ronin | 12,256,973 | 1,952,330 | 10.2 RON | 20.51 RON | 2026-10-21 |
Axies are the NFT that matters in Axie Infinity: they’re the creatures you battle and breed with, and Axie NFTs work as tickets to every current and future experience built on the Axie IP. Land and consumable items are the other two collections, and both are smaller side markets.
As of October 21, 2026, 2,090,466 wallets hold NFTs across the game’s collections, and the game’s recorded NFT trading volume is 2,204.06 ETH.
Axies, land and items by the numbers
Ownership of Axie consumable items is concentrated. The Axie Consumable Item collection holds 2,539,816 items across 44,792 owners, and owners equal just 1.8% of the item count, so most items sit in a small group of wallets.
Land is the scarcest collection. The Axie Land collection has 16,887 plots and 12,042 sales, and owners equal 22% of the item count.
Axie items arrived in stages. NFT runes and charms came to App.axie in August 2022, and Axie accessories followed in December 2022, so items now sit on top of the Axies themselves.
Team, funding and whitepaper
| Date | Round | Amount | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-04-06 | Series C | $150 million | Binance Labs, Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm and 3 more |
| 2021-10-04 | Series B | $152 million | Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm, Fabric Ventures and 9 more |
| 2021-05-11 | Series A | $7.5 million | Hashed, CMT Digital, Alliance DAO and 9 more |
| 2019-11-07 | Seed | $1.5 million | Animoca Brands, Hashed, 500 Global and 1 more |
Rounds as recorded in our funding database; each round links its page there.
Axie Infinity comes from a named studio with founders on the record: Sky Mavis, a technology-focused game studio founded in early 2018. The company trades as Sky Mavis Pte Ltd under registration number 201913227N, and its products are Axie Infinity, App.Axie, Ronin, Mavis Market and Mavis Hub.
Who runs Sky Mavis
Founder Trung represented Vietnam at the ACM-ICPC World Final 2014 in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Before founding Axie Infinity he worked at Trusting Social and Anduin Transactions. Many of its members met through coding contests such as the ICPC, and some give talks in Vietnam’s Rust community.
Funding rounds and backers
The seed round raised $1.5 million on November 7, 2019, from Animoca Brands, Hashed, 500 Global and ConsenSys.
On May 11, 2021, the Series A brought in $7.5 million from Hashed, CMT Digital, Alliance DAO, Fabric Ventures, Animoca Brands, Collab+Currency, Strobe Ventures, 500 Global, Dialectic Capital, CoinGecko Ventures, Libertus Capital and Free Company.
The Series B of October 4, 2021, raised $152 million. Its backers were Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm, Fabric Ventures, Samsung Next, Accel, Standard Crypto, Seven Seven Six, VaynerFund, Not Boring Capital, BACKED, Rainfall and SNÖ Ventures. Sky Mavis said it raised the money to create economic freedom for gamers, and Accel partner Andrei Brasoveanu named Trung, Aleks and Jiho as the founders his firm met.
A $150 million Series C followed on April 6, 2022, from Binance Labs, Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm, Accel, Animoca Brands and Dialectic Capital. Binance led the round, investors committed it within one week of the Ronin Security Breach, and Sky Mavis announced it alongside a plan to restore funds on the Ronin Bridge.
What the whitepaper promises
The core team builds features for Axie-branded game assets together with the community, and the game must be fun above all else, since only an immersive game can draw enough players to give the network value. That gameplay page was last updated 4 years ago.
Community pulse
| Channel | Size | Activity |
|---|---|---|
| Telegram | 5,290 subscribers | latest post 2025-10-15 |
| X | 881,300 followers | latest post 2026-10-22 |
Axie Infinity’s audience is on X and Discord, and its Telegram channel has gone quiet. As of October 21, 2026, the @axieinfinity account on X has 881,300 followers and was still posting that day, with lore threads on the Bird tribe. The newest one is dated October 15, 2025. For news, X is the channel to follow.
What players praise and complain about
The angriest complaints come from people who bought Axies. One Trustpilot reviewer summed the game up as “Play to loss. I lost money and axie value went to zero.” Another Trustpilot user claimed that streamers who promote Axie get better cards than their opponents and stay at the top of the leaderboard.
Competitive players focus on when rewards arrive.
Atia’s Legacy has drawn the most detailed feedback. Playtesters found the content too thin for long sessions, and most finished it within a few hours. The playtesters also disliked that the leader axie can’t be changed, wanted axie parts to count for more than equipment, and asked for a clearer equipment page. Some preferred a smaller team or a single axie over running around with a full squad.
How Sky Mavis responds
Sky Mavis posts playtest feedback on its official blog. The next Atia’s Legacy playtest is aimed at players who have never heard of Axie. The Vibeathon builders program brought in 91 playable games in Round 1, and players are asked to try those builds and leave feedback in the Axie Discord.
Roadmap and current status
Axie Infinity is live on Ronin as of October 21, 2026, and sits #1 on our ranked list of crypto games. Its shape has changed over the past year. Sky Mavis runs Origins, Terrariums and the Atia’s Legacy playtests itself, and it has handed Axie Classic and a new wave of mini-games to the community.
What Sky Mavis runs
Homeland officially sunset with the Terrariums V1 release on June 17, 2026. In Terrariums, each plot type shares a set bAXS prize pool. Ahead of the first Halloween event in Terrariums, Nightmare axie sales rose 84% in the three days after the announcement, according to an X post from @pos2 that we reported on October 19, 2026.
Axie Classic is a different story. After Competitive Season 16, Sky Mavis put regular competitive seasons and Classic development on hold and passed development to the game’s community, as we reported on August 13, 2026.
Atia’s Legacy, the Axie MMO, is still in testing. Playtest 3 went live on July 1, 2026, playable on iOS, Android and PC. On October 4, 2026, the official Axie Infinity account on X said the full release will support Android and iOS and that the next playtest will focus on PC.
Builders and the Games Hub
The Axie Vibeathon, launched September 1, 2026, has builders make playable Axie games with AI tools for a share of a 20,000 bAXS prize pool. The Top 8 are in Round 2, with final submissions due November 7, 2026.
Back in 2022, the Axie Builder’s Program launched in February and the Axie Infinity: Origins Alpha in April, and Homeland’s Pre-Beta Phase followed in September 2023. A 2022 BitPinas guide reported that non-NFT Starter Axies let gamers start for free. Two items on the 2023 roadmap, Axie Part Upgrades and an Axie Merch Store, carry no completion tick.
Risks
Moving rewards to bAXS leaves players with the same exposure to AXS.
Earning in Terrariums needs land. A plot is what pays out bAXS, and the free version comes with 10 axie slots, no earnings and no AXP. Each tick on an active plot also uses up Lunium, so a plot costs something to run as well as to buy.
Axies themselves are spread thin. In the Axie collection, distinct owners equal 15.9% of the item count as of October 21, 2026, which means most Axies sit in wallets that hold several.
The competitive seasons have warning signs too. W3Gamer reported that Origins Season 16 kept the existing setup without fresh gameplay tweaks or balance shifts, and that early X reactions raised “concerns over delayed incentives potentially cooling mid-season momentum.”
Atia’s Legacy is still in playtests, and testers used up most of its content within a few hours.
Ronin has a security record you should know about. In April 2022, Sky Mavis announced a funding round in the wake of the Ronin Security Breach and said funds would be restored on the Ronin Bridge.
Axie Infinity alternatives
Comparable games on our ranked list: Splinterlands, Alien Worlds and Gods Unchained. Axie Infinity sits at #1. Each one’s page has its genre, chain, token and current status side by side with this one.
What to watch next
- Upcoming: Atia’s Legacy will launch on PC, Android and iOS as Sky Mavis moves next playtest to PC
Verdict: is Axie Infinity worth your time?
Axie Infinity is worth your time as a free-to-start strategy card battler with live competitive seasons. It is a poor bet if you want income. You can build a team of starter Axies for free, and Origins Season 19 is live with an 80,000 bAXS prize pool, as we reported.
Who it suits
Origins suits players who like planning turns more than racing reflexes. It is the mode Sky Mavis still runs on a season calendar, and the game logged 30 dated updates and news items in the 12 months to October 21, 2026.
Land owners have the most active new system. Terrariums went live on June 17, 2026, and Homeland has officially sunset. Plots earn bAXS every hour while they’re powered with Lunium, and we reported that 10,722 plots had been activated. Each plot type shares a fixed bAXS pool, split by the Atia’s Flame each owner brings.
Who should skip it
Skip it if earning is your reason to play.
Classic fans face a shrinking mode. Season 16 was the last season Sky Mavis ran, and the studio paused competitive play and active development on September 10, 2026, leaving Classic’s future with its community.
What would move the score
The score drops if Origins goes the way of Classic and loses its regular seasons. A full Atia’s Legacy release would raise it. The playtest build runs on iOS, Android and PC, and a launch with enough content to last past a few hours would give new players a reason to stay.
Pick Axie Infinity if you want creatures you breed and own that also feed land rewards in Terrariums.
Frequently asked questions
Is Axie Infinity free to play?
Yes. You can start with a team of free starter Axies and play without buying any NFTs. Buying Axies is optional and only matters if you want a bigger roster.
Which blockchain does Axie Infinity use?
Axie Infinity runs on Ronin, an Ethereum-linked chain built for the game. Ethereum is still involved when assets move.
What platforms is Axie Infinity on?
Axie Infinity: Origins has a listing on Apple’s App Store.
Who develops Axie Infinity?
Sky Mavis develops Axie Infinity. The studio also built Ronin and App.Axie.
Browse our ranked list of crypto games or open Axie Infinity in our catalog.
