Gaming studio 9 Lives Interactive has announced that they are officially reopening the pre-alpha demo of hero shooter Nyan Heroes on May 8th for a limited time, adding new ranked gameplay to make the new Airdrop Season 2 more competitive than the last.

Season 2 Features

Airdrop Season 2 — Hunt for Catnip features a new matchmaking ranking (MMR) system to add more competitiveness to the game while rewarding players for their skill-based performance. With this system, players should be matched accordingly with opponents of similar skill level for a fair playing ground. Everyone will initially start as Unranked and work their way up through 8 ranks: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, Grand Master, and Champion.

Catnip

As you complete in-game objectives and do daily social missions, you will be rewarded with Catnip, a valuable resource that will be converted into $NYAN at the end of the season. Bonus Catnip is awarded based on the rank you end the season with. If you earned in-game Catnip in the previous season, you will be rewarded for being early by having the previously-collected Catnip multiplied by 100x, which you’ll see on the Game Missions balance on the official website. While no specific dates for the airdrop and TGE are available, the developers do seem to plan on launching the $NYAN token at some point this month.

To prevent bots and multi-account farming, the team is introducing a new verification process that should help in fairer distribution of rewards. The process has not been specifically detailed, but is said to include simple steps that everyone will have to complete, including players from Season 1.

This ranked playtest will run from May 8th to May 26th on the Epic Games Store, where the Web3 title managed to rank in the top 30 most played games during the previous season.