I have played some of the more popular games on steemit but I feel steemonsters is by far the best. Here are the games I had and still play that is related to the steem token and free to play. I will grade the games from A to F starting from the worst to the best.

Next Colony



The goal of the game is to own as many planets in the universe and destroy as many of your opponent's ships as much as possible. I remember playing the game at its initial stages where maps where filled with undiscovered territory and to whom found the new planets they would have the upper hand.


Why I think it fails is in a few items. The game's graphics is much more intense that needed for a strategy game so a lot of times when I load mapping screen it will take full minute to load page. Then there is the ability to buy and sell planets once discovered. For those who first started out and trying to find new planets may have had a fun time as most territory were undiscovered. However as time moved forward a lot of the map territory were searched and it became apparent that finding planets for newcomers were much more difficult than those who played it since the start. The end result is the game could not gain momentum with new players playing and staying.


The in game token that could be traded for steem is called stardust and is currently have 1 stardust worth around 0.00089 to 0.00099 steems. Not a whole lot to earn playing the game and again to players who started late the difficulty of gaining resources and discovering planets were much more difficult. I give the game a D+. I do not recommend others to play this game.




Drug Wars


There is much to be desired for a game that started red hot but due to money grubbing developers the game simply flamed out. The theme to the game is to build the highest amount of drugs and sell it for drug war dollars (DWD). The conversion rate from DWD to steem has continuously dropping and currently 1 DWD is worth approximately 0.0255 steem.


The game has a lottery feature for players to gamble their drugs away for a chance to win bounties. The who thing with drugs and gambling makes this game interesting in a safe way players get to deal with drugs as if they were in a real life cartel. The drawback comes at the time and effort to earn decent amount of DWD.


The game is easy to learn as players build drug, alcohol, and weapons buildings that earn them higher status and more DWD. There is also a way to rob from other players in order to earn more. As time went on with the game the earnings of steem per a day earned dropped significantly and today it has gotten to the point that users who invested steem into the game are in the red. It is so because the developers inflated their own currency while open market had the DWD token worth a lot less. Once outside the game DWD token is worth a lot less but the developers never lower the in game cost which detracted a lot of existing and new players.


Although the game is simple to learn and play it is difficult for new comers to build up and protect their resources as many of the top established players can attack and steal away the resources. I would end with grading this game a C+. I earn quite literally 1 DWD in three or more days so still play it daily to rise my drug production but all in all the game is has a lot left to desire.




Steemnova


The first steem games I started to play and similar to drugwars players have to building up resources and build ships to steal other player's resources. The end goal is to have the highest points in the game based on the most: building points, defense points, research points, and fleet ship points combined. Each week the @steemnova account will distribute earnings to the top players.


Currently there is no in game purchases yet so everyone starts on a equal playing field. The game does get difficult once players are well established. However the game recently updated to a new version to battle against using bots to cheat and making the game user inference much better on mobile phone. This has allowed new players and veterans to play the game in a fairer environment than in past version.


The game is 24/7 so players can get attack or plan attacks at any given time. A lot of strategy is involved to compete and reach for the top spot. It has a better strategy than drugwars. For that and the ability for steemnova's developers to make this game fair I give the game an overall grade of B+.




Steemmonsters


The way splinterlands/steemmonsters has developed over the years has been more than remarkable. I do not think there is much to explain about the game when considering how active people are in playing steemmonsters when compared to other dapps. Just check out link here where steemmonsters is ranked first as currently most played dapp game.


The theme of the game is to collect cards and used them in duels. There is an infinite amount of combinations of cards players can have in duels and the best forms that survives wins! The graphics of the game is not too heavy that it will stall, but good enough that the value of a picture card can be worth in the thousands of USD! Slight drawback for this game is the initial upfront cost to do well in the game would be much more than any of the other games listed here in this post. To those familiar with the game the cost of summoners at higher levels have grown exponentially therefore new players will have to put in some $$$ if they intend to earn while playing the game. Although the developers have recently introduced a new set of cards in hope to attract more newcomers and lower buy in cost it remains to be seen if this will work.


By now you should feel I have a bias toward which game is the best. Still for those who have yet to try out steemmonsters, which are plenty considering we have just over 3,000+ daily active users and there are over a million steemians. I give steemmonsters an A!