Fully onchain games represent the most radical vision of blockchain gaming: games where every piece of state — every player position, every item, every action — lives on the blockchain rather than on a centralized server. The movement draws inspiration from the “autonomous worlds” concept: game worlds that exist permanently on-chain, can’t be shut down by any company, and can be modified by anyone who writes compatible smart contracts.
Dark Forest, launched in 2020 by Brian Gu and others, was the first widely recognized fully onchain game. It used zero-knowledge proofs to create a “fog of war” in an onchain strategy game — a technical achievement that demonstrated complex game mechanics were possible entirely on-chain. The game attracted a dedicated community of builders who created bots, tools, and mods that interacted with the game’s smart contracts directly.
By 2024, fully onchain games had their own ecosystem: MUD (by Lattice, the team behind OPCraft), Dojo (by Realms, built on StarkNet), and other frameworks made it easier to build complex onchain game logic. Projects like Realms, Loot Survivor, and Primodium explored different genres — from RPGs to survival games to strategy — all running entirely on smart contracts.
Fully onchain games remain niche. They’re slow, expensive (even on L2s), and can’t match the performance of traditional games. But their proponents argue that’s missing the point: the value isn’t in graphics or speed, it’s in permanence, composability, and player sovereignty. A fully onchain game world can’t be shut down, can’t have its rules changed unilaterally, and can be extended by anyone. Whether that’s a meaningful advantage for actual players, or just an ideological commitment by builders, is a question the category is still answering.
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