Step Into Vitalik’s Shoes: The Ethereum Story Reborn as an Immersive Game
Forget dry whitepapers—this is crypto history as you've never experienced it. A new game drops players into the chaotic early days of Ethereum through the eyes of its boy-genius creator.
From basement coder to blockchain messiah
Relive every gas fee spike, hard fork drama, and moonbound price surge as if you were calling the shots yourself. The game's AI even mimics Vitalik's signature thought patterns—expect sudden pivots to quadratic voting schemes mid-conversation.
Wall Street bankers need not apply
True to Ethereum's roots, the game rewards decentralized thinking. Make one centralized tradeoff and watch your in-game ETH balance evaporate faster than a DeFi rug pull. Bonus level: navigate the 2017 ICO craze without getting sued by the SEC.
Because nothing says 'financial revolution' like gamified survivor bias.
Fight enemies, power up, and create Ethereum. Image: Decrypt.
“[Vitalik.run] is full of tiny and massive references, memes, and a lot of love and respect for the space,” Edelstein told Decrypt.
The game sees Buterin write the ETH whitepaper, assemble a team, fight off critics, launch mainnet, fix bugs, ride the ICO craze, and further—in that sense, it is reminiscent of Game Dev Tycoon.
“The Ethereum story has always felt like something truly epic; it’s shaped the space and has affected the trajectory of my life. Vitalik Run is my tribute to it,” said Edelstein, who most recently built the NFT bridge XP.Network. “I think it's educational in a South Park way.”
The game is easy to pick up, but difficult to master. Players use the arrow keys to switch between three lines, space bar to attack enemies, and the number keys to choose power-ups. But players are only granted one life: If you die, you’re sent back to the start.
At the time of writing, per the public leaderboard, the high score is 12,778, which Edelstein says isn’t very DEEP into the storyline. The developer estimates it’ll take a player approximately 45 minutes to complete the entire story.
“Vitalik is THE GUY, his journey of building Ethereum is the hero journey, he’s a total nerd kid with a dream, building in public, facing doubt, distractions, and still pushing through, getting shit done,” Edelstein explained. “In my eyes, he’s the crypto champion.”
Despite Vitalik.run being rooted in love for the crypto scene, it doesn’t use any blockchain features. The developer says this is because he wanted to focus on creating an enjoyable experience, but didn’t close the door to future crypto implementations.
“Crypto games try too hard to be financial products first and actual games second, which is totally backwards,” the Ethereum game creator told Decrypt. “Games are supposed to be fun; most of them miss that. We don’t need another ‘earn’ mechanic placed on top of something that is half ready.”
It’s been a rough year for crypto gaming, as many of the most notable projects have shut shop—often citing a lack of funding. Some experts, including John Linden, co-founder and CEO of Mythical Games, told Decrypt that 90% of traditional games fail anyway; it’s just that crypto games fail on a more public stage.
Issuing tokens or NFTs brings immense pressure to the game studio. In some cases, like with Fractional Uprising’s OpenSeason, investors’ deafening desire for the token to pump becomes a major distraction to the Core experience. As a result, the co-founder of the studio called adding a token to game development “a fucking nightmare.”
“I didn’t want to overcomplicate things with crypto. Asking someone to connect a wallet requires a lot of trust, and that’s not the point here,” he added. “If there’s demand, I might add some on-chain elements later, but only if it makes it a better game.”
