Mining ETH through gamified crypto apps - viable or not?

Hello :)

Even though the mining of ETH hasn't been possible for some time now, I've been looking for something that could be a viable replacement for this. The main reason is that I've always been interested in getting into crypto mining, but never had enough money to buy physical rigs. Plus, being a student who used to live in a dorm, I couldn't really dedicate enough space/energy resources to mining rigs and it just remained a distant dream.

I graduated since then, found a decently paying job, and moved into my own place so what I'm trying to find now is a way to get back into crypto mining when I can finally afford it. The only issue is that neither of the "big" currencies is minable atm, and I'm really not interested in wasting my time/money on mining shady cryptos that will most likely crash and leave me hanging.

I saw some projects that are reviving ETH mining indirectly by basing their own crypto on ETH and allowing players to mine ETH by mining their crypto. This is basically virtually mining ETH which is also eco-friendly, which is an advantage over physical rigs. NFT City Miner is a great example of this type of project, but there are other that I find interesting as well. The bonus is that they guarantee the worth of investments through smart contracts, so it also feels a bit safer than "traditional", physical mining.

I wanted to check here if investing in such projects would be a good idea before going full in. Please let me know your thoughts on this, I'll appreciate them a lot :)