Weekly Alpha Gaming Metaverse Expedition (WAGME) #25 — 3 November
Moonveil Studio closes $5.4million fundraising round led by Gumi Cryptos Capital & Arcane Group, Small Brain Games launches Draw.Tech, and Sleepagotchi graduates from Alliance DAO's 11th cohort.
👁️ Highlights at a Glance
🔥 Hot Take:
It's fun to speculate on soft currencies that mix speculation with utility. But be careful, don’t be emotional and never play with more than you can afford to lose. - Jiho (Axie Infinity)
🏆 Top 3 of the Week:
Moonveil closes its $5.4m fundraising round led by Gumi Cryptos Capital & Arcane Group. The team is developing 2 games namely Astrark: Stage ONE, a PvP & PvE tower defense game on mobile and Project B, a multiplayer strategy game that they are developing in stealth. More
Small Brain Games launches Draw.Tech, a fully on-chain mobile game gamifying art and functions as a side-loaded app where players compete for space on a dynamic game board by purchasing tiles to draw on with users earning rewards and reputation as they own more tiles or make contributions that others want to keep.
Sleepagotchi recently graduated from Alliance DAO’s 11th cohort. Built by Anton Kraminkin, the sleep tracking game that has been able to attract more than 14,000 MAU helps users maintain a regular sleep schedule and rewards them with NFTs. Unlike Pokemon Sleep or smart wearables like Oura and Whoop, the game doesn’t require any special hardware to track sleep making it very accessible to everyone. With a 41% 1-year retention, the team has been able to prove that making sleep playful might just be the thing that many people needed.
🎨 Mints, Drops & Updates
Nine Chronicles — Nine Chronicles M Pre-Registration (Nov 1 - 21). More
Anichess — Early Access (Nov 3 - 10). More
Gotchi Crawler — Demo Launch (Nov 4). More
Aavegotchi — Spirit Force Arena Demo Playtest (Ends Nov 4). More
Nounish Punk — NFT Mint (Nov 5). More
Fusionist — Expedition 3.0 (Nov 7 - 21). More
The Forgotten Runiverse — Watchers Ring Mint (Nov 8). More
The Forgotten Runiverse — Eve of Memory Gameplay Event (Nov 8). More
Fableborne — First Airdrop for Primordial NFT holders (Nov 15). More
Moonfrost — Closed Alpha Playtest 1 Wave 2 (Nov 16 - 23). More
Rumble Racing Star — Open Beta (Nov 22). More
OVERWORLD — Genesis Incarna Mint (Dec 15). More
Rumble Racing Star — Open Beta (Nov 22). More
🎮 Gaming Updates
Aavegotchi Spirit Force Arena will have a Limited Playtest on Oct 28 to Nov 4. More
Axie Infinity announced that Axie Experience Points (AXP) are now live in Project T and can be earned by training in the Dojo, catching wild Butterflies and producing food with your Axies. It must be noted that users must have at least 5 Axies in order to gain access to the game. More
Axie Infinity released some figures of its monthly stats which include 100k Origin players, 30k classic players, 134k axis sold (with 20k wallet addresses buying & selling) and 10 $SLP burnt per SLP earned. More
Battlebound released a Boss Battle preview for a creature collecting game that it is developing titled Project A. More
Call of the Voyd’s new version Call of the VoYd: Heartliners is now available for play on the Apple App Store. More
David Amor from Playmint showcased a building configurator in their on-chain game, Downstream that allows players to deploy their own smart contracts without any programming knowledge and ever leaving the game. More
Decentral Games launched their new cashback program, and is now hosting a 2x cashback weekend for their first 24 hour competition. More
Fusionist introduces Expedition 3.0 which features the highly anticipated PvP mode where players can earn NOVA from engaging in battles with their opponents, free access to S-Mechs and Cores and Season Zero Special Rewards which contain 800 Beta Key rewards to Fusionist Beta II: Galactic Duel. More
Genopets v0.9.0 is in its final testing stages. More
Immutable announced the Closed Beta Launch for The Lost Glitches, a collectible card game (CCG). Users who participate in Season 1 can complete quests to earn rewards. More
Kix (SpeculatorArt) announced that Tiltyard, is a platform that enables fully on-chain competitive games (DraftKings meets Video Games) and will be launching in January 2024. More
Kratos Studios, an Indian-based Web3 Gaming venture announced a $5m Grant Program that will help Web2 game development studios transition their games to blockchain gaming. More
Loot Realms is opening applications for its 2nd Funding Round to kickstart new on-chain projects building on Realms. Deadline is Nov 4. More
Loot Survivor launches mainnet pre-release tournament and golden token (OE) NFT mint that entitles holders to one daily free game of Loot Survivor on Starknet. More
Mahjong Meta announced that Season 2 Phase 2 will launch in early December introducing fashion updates and other exciting new features. More
Merit Circle’s Beam Faucet is now live. Users can claim some $BEAM to start doing some transactions on their network by visiting their faucet page. More
Midnight Society released SS7.1 Patch. More
Mighty Action Heroes is extending its Season Pass to December 8 giving players who installed the game via Google Play enough time to unlock Sally. More
Mojo Melee has soft launched on Kongregate. More
Nifty Island announced their partnership with Moonbirds with avatars and NFT prizes that will be available to holders in their open beta. More
Nine Chronicles announced that Pre-Registration for its fully on-chain open-sourced MMORPG, Nine Chronicles M is now open from Nov 1 - 21. More
Parallel introduced Season 4: Sinister Ascent featuring a new Battle Pass, the legendary card Baron Squire, the Vile and various new customization options like Paragon Emotes and Field Backs, along with an in-game store for exclusive items. Other updates include adjustments to Replication, mission and XP value changes for enhanced gameplay and a raffle for Season 3’s Crimson Confidant Masterpiece with further anticipated balance changes to come in the following weeks. More
Pirate Nation announced Release 47 which features combat sequences with multiple enemies, 31 new combat cards, and 3D model download availability for any of a user’s pirates. More
Pixels announced that they have officially migrated to Ronin and players can win a Pixels Genesis Pet by heading to the Pixel Carnival to play mini-games, harvest crops, and chat with NPCs. More
Shadow War released more details about their in-game token, Shadow Credit which will be launching in Q2 2024 and also be airdropped to Agents NFT holders. More
Small Brain Games launched Draw.Tech, a fully on-chain mobile game gamifying art that functions as a side-loaded app where players compete for space on a dynamic game board by purchasing tiles to draw on with users earning rewards and reputation as they own more tiles or make contributions that others want to keep. More
Star Atlas announced during Solana Breakpoint 2023 that Play-to-Own is coming with its 2.2 update featuring 3rd-person shooter modes, combat racing with up to 100 players, and new MUD, ONI and Ustur characters. More
Star Atlas announces upcoming move-to-progress mobile app. More
Star Atlas introduces new Crew Recruitment Packs that are expected to arrive in Q1 2024 which users can open and use in the mobile app, SAGE, and on Star Atlas UE5. More
Sunflower Land's new season with new bumpkins and new deliveries started in November. More
Tatsumeeko released their November newsletter covering fall-themed furniture, new store token pet cosmetics, monthly vote rewards and supporter rewards. More
The Axie Game Jam Voting Phase has begun, and players can now start playtesting and voting for their favorite games on Mavis Hub. More
The Beacon showcased progress on their new cosmetic system. More
The Forgotten Runiverse announced that their game is now available for wishlisting on the Epic Games Store. More
The Forgotten Runiverse announced that they will be launching on Arbitrum. During the pre-alpha Eve of Memory event, only some items will be mintable for balancing purposes but these items will become transferable on the official release. More
Twilight Shift, a roguelike looter shooter at its core, with combat, mining, & augment systems, released details on their v1.2.2384 build. More
Worldwide Webb is releasing "Restless Souls" an exclusive NFT for players who participated in the playtest for at least 1 hour. More
Yat Siu the Chairman of Animoca Brands announced that they have secured a $50m strategic partnership and investment from NEOM to expand the vision and mission of Web3 and Digital Property Rights in Saudi Arabia. More
📚 Deep Dive
Sleepagotchi recently graduated from Alliance DAO’s 11th cohort. Built by Anton Kraminkin, the sleep tracking game that has been able to attract more than 14,000 MAU helps users maintain a regular sleep schedule and rewards them with NFTs. Unlike Pokemon Sleep or smart wearables like Oura and Whoop, the game doesn’t require any special hardware to track sleep making it very accessible to everyone. With a 41% 1-year retention, the team has been able to prove that making sleep playful might just be the thing that many people needed.
1ogic released an informative guide of how to ROI in Axie Infinity as a new or casual player.
Wolves DAO released a piece covering how Web3 studios are competing with industry giants by targeting the lucrative casual gaming mobile market and leveraging a combination of user-friendly onboarding, quick development cycles and broad appeal. The group noted how innovation in the casual genre represents itself in the form of studio NFTs and nano-rewards which unlock new monetization strategies and encourage a new system of trading and social interaction within communities.
YQ from Alt Layer released a piece diving into how the tech behind building Autonomous Worlds requires a blend of game design, blockchain expertise and the support of infrastructure such as Layer 2 solutions and oracles that enable interconnected metaverses and truly decentralized virtual economies to function.
Ancient 8 recently published a comprehensive report on Fully On-Chain Games: Unlocking the Virtual Autonomous Economies where they dove into the benefits as well as the challenges of building decentralized, transparent and permissionless gaming experiences that are hosted entirely on the blockchain.
Wolves DAO published ‘The Chopping Block’, a community rating system for Web3 games that spans across 6 different categories namely Gameplay, Graphics, Lore, Tokenomics, NFTs and Team. The group started off with evaluating Big Time and gave it a community rating score of 5.8 noting that there is still room for improvement with regards to Lore & Tokenomics.
Andrew Steinwold from Sfermion discussed how the metaverse is an inevitable future due the global trends that we’re seeing nowadays — an increase in global internet connectivity, rise in screen time and the continuous integration of the internet into our daily life through smart wearables. He also noted significant tech industry movements such as the use of AI companions, virtual influencers, and the digitization of consumer goods are all laying the groundwork for a comprehensive virtual ecosystem.
Jonah Blake, from Real Third Web published a piece titled: Super Games need Super Returns: Where’s the VC money going? In the article he discussed the rising trend of “super games’ with massive budgets and its implications for the gaming industry — the potential disappearance of mid-core games and that gaming innovation will probably come from small budget startups.
Conglomerate, a contributor of TheCoreLoop released Weekly Onchain Gaming Roundup #6 covering Small Brain Games’ release of Drawtech, the first ever fully onchain mobile game, Wallet detection support for Paima’s Engine, and Loot Realms’ mainnet pre-release tournament and The Golden Token mint.
Innovators: Projects bringing something new or disrupting the norm
Starkmon — 2D creature-collecting game built with Dojo on Starknet where players hunt and capture extraordinary creatures. Currently in testnet but will soon be in mainnet 👀 More
Game Makers: New studios, developers or titles entering the space
Axie Party Game — New casual battle royale game built on top of Axie Infinity as part of Axie Game Jam 2023. More
Verse 8 — Open sourced decentralized Roguelike RPG being developed by Planetarium Labs. More
TactiCards — Ragnarok, Dofus and Runescape inspired Web-based MMORPG with TCG and Tactics elements. More
Tech Corner: Focus on infrastructure tools and platforms
Brototype Labs — Team developing a fully on-chain tactical strategy battle royale game called Deadzone. More
🧠 Closing Thoughts
"In the game of innovation, persistence is the player's greatest power-up and the builder's most reliable tool."
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