Sales for Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs and associated projects have been increasing rapidly, as the creator of the BAYC, Yuga Labs, has announced plans to launch a new skill-based web game called Dookey Dash. The game requires players to own a Bored Ape Yacht Club or Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT to play, and promises rewards for top scores. The game, called Dookey Dash, is a browser-based “endless runner” style game where players must navigate through a cartoonish sewer environment while collecting items without crashing.
Only owners of BAYC and Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs can receive a Sewer Pass NFT to play the upcoming game. Yuga Labs revealed full details for the experience on Wednesday, and since then sales for its Ethereum-based NFT projects have spiked. According to data from CryptoSlam, sales volume for Mutant Ape NFTs, which are typically more affordable than BAYC NFTs, has increased by 124% over the past 24 hours to $4.2 million. Similarly, BAYC NFT sales have jumped 171% to nearly $3.5 million. Bored Ape Kennel Club NFTs, which will also have a role in Dookey Dash, have seen a 134% increase in sales to over $3.3 million.
From January 17 to February 8, BAYC and Mutant Ape owners can claim a free Sewer Pass NFT to play Dookey Dash. The Sewer Pass is required to play the game, but it can be resold, potentially driving momentum in the secondary market. The Sewer Passes will have multiple tiers based on which BAYC NFTs a user owns, and some tiers will provide a bonus to the player’s game score.
Dookey Dash, which is based on toilet humor, will be playable between January 18 and February 8. As long as a Sewer Pass is used to play the game at least once, Yuga Labs has stated that the pass will be “eligible to transform into something new.” The game is designed to be a “skill-based mint,” and a leaderboard will track the top scores from all players during the gameplay window. The official website for Dookey Dash states that “players will be rewarded based on their performance in the sewer.”
The BAYC is one of the most successful NFT projects to date, with the main collection generating over $2.6 billion worth of trades since its April 2021 launch. Subsequent projects, including the Mutant Apes and virtual land plots for the upcoming Otherside metaverse game, have added more than $3.5 billion worth of further NFT trades to the tally. BAYC owners have a history of being rewarded for holding one of the 10,000 original Ethereum-based NFTs. They have received free airdrops or claims for the valuable Mutant Ape, Kennel Club, and Otherside NFT drops, along with an allotment of the ApeCoin Ethereum token that was worth tens of thousands of dollars at launch in March 2022.
The BAYC NFTs sold for about $200 worth of ETH during the initial mint, but prices surged in late 2021 and into early 2022. Some have sold for more than a million dollars, with the floor price—or price of the cheapest listed NFT on a marketplace—peaking at $429,000 worth of ETH in April 2022 ahead of the Otherside land rollout. However, prices have fallen sharply in the months since amid a broader NFT market downturn, as the BAYC floor price dipped below $60.