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Web3 auto-battler Eternal Dragons, by Trailblazer Games, is now live on Android for mobile gamers

admin — Sun, 14 May 2023 00:19:23 +0000

Web3 game developer Trailblazer Games is the studio building Eternal Dragons. Trailblazer Games raised $8.2 million in March of 2022. Makers Fund led the round with participation from Play Ventures, Fabric Ventures. The list of angel investors included Aleksander Larsen, Chris Lee, Oliver Löffler, Santiago Santos, Itamar Lesuisse, and Sagi Shorrer.

The studio recently expanded into Vietnam with the opening of its first office in Ho Chi Minh city. The founders are Bertrand Lamarque, Andreas Risberg, and Alex Arias. The three serial entrepreneurs and veteran gaming industry leaders are from the likes of King, EA and Microsoft. They have experience in building large scale and sustainable free-to-play economies.

The Eternal Dragons IP includes:

Eternal Dragons – Prologue: Genesis

Eternal Dragons – Chapter 1: Strife

Eternal Dragons – Chapter 2: House of Dragons

Eternal Dragons – Chapter 3: War of Kings

Eternal Dragons is described as an eSport, auto-battler game built on the Solana blockchain with Dragons as combat units. Featuring both PvE and PvP game modes, with leaderboards and prizes for both.

Redemption Games Raised $7 Million Funding Round and Breaks Away From AppLovin

admin — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 19:15:45 +0000

Redemption Games raises a $7 million funding round and breaks away from AppLovin. The round was led by Play Ventures with participation from Bitkraft, Merit Circle DAO, Orange DAO, and more. Redemption Games stated that it wants to use the new funding to explore new gaming technologies including integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and digital collectibles.

Redemption Games is best known for creating the mobile game Sweet Escapes before it was acquired. According to Redemption co-founder Michael Witz, Sweet Escapes generated more than $60 million in lifetime revenue.

Redemption Games founders Michael Witz and Dan Lin are also behind Jam City’s hit mobile game Cookie Jam, which generated more than $500 million for the mobile game publisher. Jam City also acquired Mob Science, another game studio co-founded by Lin and Witz.

Tower Pop Raised $2.1M For Web3 Battle Royale/Tower Defense Game Omega Royale

admin — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 05:39:22 +0000

Tower Pop raises $2.1 million for Web3 battle royale and tower defense game: Omega Royale. The funding round was led by Play Ventures, Agnitio Capital, and backed by angel investor Santiago R. Santos. This round was the second funding round for Tower Pop, with the previous round being closed in early 2021. After this round, Tower Pop has raised $2.8 million in total. The founders are cousins Fredrik Wahrman and Niklas Wahrman.

The company says they are using a new “play-to-mint” model, where players who are dedicated to the game and rank the highest can mint the collectible non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the game.

Fredrik Wahrman and Niklas Wahrman started Tower Pop in 2020. With Tower Pop, they decided to stay in tower defense games but switch the focus to multiplayer games. Players can enjoy the game as a free-to-play title, but they can also opt to spend money and collect NFTs as well. Tower Pop has just started its second season of Omega Royale.

Hypersonic Laboratories, Creator of HELIX Metaverse Raised $3.5 Million and Alpha 2.0 Reveal

admin — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 20:34:55 +0000

Hypersonic Laboratories, creator of HELIX Metaverse, raises $3.5 million and Alpha 2.0 reveal.

Hypersonic Laboratories is the startup behind the HELIX – described as a high-fidelity open-world metaverse platform. They recently raised $3.5 Million in a pre-seed round led by Play Ventures. Samsung Next, GSR, Third Kind, Alex Chung (Founder of Giphy), Scott Belsky (Founder of Behance).

H.E.L.I.X. (Hyper Expansive Lifelike Interoperable eXperience) aims to be a disruptive force in blockchain gaming by utilizing hyper-realistic graphics, vast open-world environments, and an NFT-enabled item marketplace.

Set in “Parallel City’, a massively detailed virtual recreation of New York City, HELIX allows players to own properties, vehicles, clothing, businesses, and earn tokens by competing with other players and selling virtual goods.

After $2 Million Raise From Play Ventures, Smash Stars: Thunderdome Reveals Its Mint Date

admin — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 01:52:49 +0000

Smash Stars: Thunderdome reveals mint date – 31st of January – after $2M raise from Play Ventures. Back in October of 2022 Flowstate Games raised $2 million and announced its first web3 arcade game, a car combat game named “Smash Stars: Thunderdome”. Play Ventures Future Fund led the pre-seed round, with participation from Elite Game Developers founder Joakim Achrén and his syndicate of angel investors.

Smash Stars: Thunderdome is currently preparing for an alpha test launch in the first quarter of 2023. The car brawler features fast-paced multiplayer gameplay that is apparently accessible to anyone from beginners to experts.

The game has a wide array of digital assets available for purchase such as vehicles, expressive collectibles, skins, emotes, action figures, and more. Players will be able to trade these items on a secondary market. Flowstate Games has partnered with Immutable X, a game-focused Layer 2 non-fungible token (NFT) scaling solution on Ethereum.

The CEO is Edvard Groundstroem, their idea was to develop an arcade full of free-to-play games that prioritized having fun. The company is not currently planning to issue its own cryptocurrency token, as it is focused on the game.

Scenario Opens Its GenAI Art Engine To Artists and Reveals Its New Raise of $6M Led By Play Ventures

admin — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 01:50:02 +0000

Scenario announced it plans to open its GenAI art engine to artists during an early access period. They also raised over $6 million in a new round of funding. Investors in this funding round include Play Ventures, Anorak Ventures, Founders, Inc, Venture Reality Fund, Sebastien Borget (Sandbox), Luc Vincent (Meta), Patrick Wyatt (One More Game), Hamilton Chu (Second Dinner) and Justin Kan (Twitch).

Scenario’s custom generators are trained with a set of images and prompts, with the intention being for artists to upload their own images and produce similar ones in the same style. The GenAI produces images imitating the style of the training images, and can be used to generate things such as buildings, character models, items and maps.

Emmanuel de Maistre, Scenario’s CEO, stated:

“Digital artists must be empowered to train their own generators, have control over their art direction and work alongside, not against, AI. No GenAI product delivers these critical elements today – Scenario exists to deliver all of them. Generative AI will be as transformational for game development as Photoshop has been for digital photography, but it cannot get there without the same commitment to consistency and ease of use.”

Music Management Simulation Game “Blockstars” Raised $5M Led By Play Ventures

admin — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 01:43:33 +0000

Blockstars was originally called Drivetime and were known for making voice-driven games for people to play in the car. The company recently raised $5 million and changed its name to Blockstars to fit the ever-shifting market demand. Blockstars is described as a music management simulation game built on the Solana blockchain.

The $5 million dollar funding round was raised through a combination of an equity and token financing round led by Play Ventures through its Future Fund. Existing shareholders Makers Fund, Solana, Magic Eden, Merit Circle, and Citizen X also invested.

Niko Vuori is the CEO of Blockstars. In the game, players put together musicians called “Blockstars” who write, record, and release singles. Players then package their greatest hits into albums and put in the time and effort to improve their skills and ultimately work towards the goal of earning enough money to start and upgrade their own.

Winners of various categories of competitions within the game can earn rewards in the form of $ROC, the game’s main token on the Solana blockchain. The token is used for major game actions (such as minting, buying, and selling Blockstars and other in-game NFT assets, as well as determining governance structure).

Led By Play Ventures, Freedom Games Revealed $10M Raise With Nashville Capital Network’s Participation

admin — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 01:34:32 +0000

Freedom Games reveals a $10 million dollar raise led by Play Ventures with participation from Nashville Capital Network and GFR Fund. The Alabama-based company is only just over a year old but it has already published successful indie projects like Coromon, Dreamscaper, Dark Deity, Cat Café Manager, and Symphony of War. Each of those titles has sold hundreds of thousands of copies at the time of reporting.

Ben Robinson, COO of Freedom Games, stated:

“When seeking a partner to join us for the next part of our exciting journey, we knew we needed someone with a background in bringing compelling experiences to broad audiences, and Play Ventures absolutely does.”

Donovan Duncan, CEO of Freedom Games, responded:

“We couldn’t be more proud to work together. Not only will this enable us to bring even more high-quality indies to fruition and continue growing our platform for creators to share their content, but to also stay committed to our developer-first mindset by continuing to invest in our suite of tools and services for indie developers.”

Tribo Has Announced Raising $1.17M For New Game Studio and “Flameys” NFTs

admin — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 20:32:45 +0000

Helsinki-based Tribo announces a raise of $1.17 million for a new game studio making games that create player-owned economies powered by digital collectibles using non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The team is currently working on a casual free-to-play multiplayer game to be revealed later this year. CEO Miko Kuusisto said the funding came from Play Ventures, Sisu Game Ventures, and Joakim Achrén.

There are five other founders who apparently have 60 years of combined experience in building mobile games. They worked on games such as Candy Crush Saga, Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies, and Nonstop Knight.

Digital ownership and open economies will be key building blocks for Tribo to pioneer new gaming experiences. To celebrate the raise, Tribo is kickstarting its core community by launching a free NFT collection called “Flameys” for its community. It is releasing 2,000 unique avatars that grant the owners perks and a VIP role in the Tribo community.

Jorge Schnura’s Company Unlockd Has Announced $4.4 Million Seed Funding Round

admin — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 18:38:18 +0000

Unlockd is described as a protocol that allows users to borrow against their NFTs. They have just announced a $4.4 million seed funding round led by Blockchain Capital. The funding will apparently be used for product and development, cross-chain expansion, and a tier 1 auditor to ensure protocol security and marketing.

Sfermion, Spartan Group, and Play Ventures were also among those that participated in the round. Other investors included IDEO CoLab, Bitscale, Sanctor Capital, Eden Ventures, Caballeros Capital, Emfarsis, Crypto Plaza, Yield Guild Games (YGG), YGG SEA, BreederDAO, BlockchainSPACE, and angel investors such as YGG founder Gabby Dizon.

Unlockd’s pooled liquidity model allows NFT holders to borrow against their NFTs while still being able to use them. Founded earlier this year by the esports club MAD Lions founder Jorge Schnura. The eight-strong team at Unlockd already has a beta version on a testnet and its protocol is undergoing auditing. It will launch the UI for the testnet in September and launch on the mainnet in October, 2022.