It's a browser based game. You play it first thing from the website.
There are also more direct links like
https://beta.ancientbeast.com and https://play.ancientbeast.com

Anyway, there's an open issue in our Github tracker so that at some point in the future we'll also have a downloadable version, similar to how Discord does things.
For now you can download the source code from Github repo and host it on your local machine, which is done often by developers contributing to the project (though nowadays many of us often use a more modern solution to get a fork set-up in the cloud with just 1 click without needing to download anything or do manual work, very convenient).



For now, you can earn by taking part of the development, from faucets or by trading the token itself.
This project is been in development for about 2 decades now, long before crypto and NFTs.
It's not designed with greed in mind, quite the opposite. People around figure its potential for dueling for crypto/NFT long time ago, especially since it's not luck based. One of the goals for this project is to easily allow good players to earn by playing well without investing anything (professional eSport players with sponsors).

There will always be a vanilla mode for the game that's pure (chess-like), meaning no tokens and NFTs at all, but the expansion will have way more going on, like some (MMO)RPG elements so it will involve the token and NFTs in a great way, no such crap as "last person carrying a heavy bag", ever. Most of the stuff will be cosmetic and the stuff that won't be cosmetic will be obtainable in multiple ways, even without spending anything at all.
Anyway, that sort of stuff is years ahead, not to worry about it now. This is not one of those NFT games coming out of the woodwork or appearing like mushrooms after a rain with a sole purpose of making quick profits. No pay-to-play or pay-to-win stuff (see next reply as well). Also keep in mind this is free open source and can be forked by community (it constantly is in order to try out patches).



There will always be a vanilla mode, no NFTs or tokens involved, but only match-based (chess-like). So game will always have the core pure and free.
Expansion will make use of tokens and NFTs, in a smart way, adding more gameplay elements (like city building, sieges, crafting, etc), so a great and feasible economy system is designed over the years. Plasma for example will have a cap and will be replenish-able, depending on your playstyle, if you need more, you could obtain some XatteR in various ways and stake that in your structure to generate more Plasma (if that makes sense for your playstyle). You don't have to buy XatteR, you can get it in a lot of ways, like airdrops, faucets, contributing to the project or the ecosystem (fix patches, make drawings or create compatible assets to sell them yourself), playing well  (defeating and looting other players or even getting a sponsor) and so on. It's something that wasn't done before at this scale afaik, so when done right, it should influence a lot of other projects as well and set the bar to new heights (in a good and innovative way); there's a lot more going on with the design but this is not the place and time to reveal everything just yet, so only a glimpse

To be honest I HATE most games out there with a passion, one way or another, even most of the ones I constantly play. I fully want to avoid pay-to-play and pay-to-win type of crapware and build something solid, non-shady and non-vapourware that can properly scale globally. I'm playing the long term game when it comes to this project and everything is carefully thought out, tested and balanced. The more support I get and people involved into this, the better, as there are more resources and feedback to make something more polished by more points of view with a clear goal and vision in mind though from the start, because more chefs don't make the soup better, so nobody is steering this in weird directions by having power over it as I don't work under a corporation umbrella or under some weird boss, plus community can fork it to try out different things and flavors, which is all good. So idea is to make something great, scalable and sustainable that will improve situation for a lot of poor people and will also live on long before I die.