Last year, a massive online MMORPG known as Diablo immortal was released in June 2022 and just today it was announced during the Diablo Developer Update livestream they are going to have an entirely new class added to the Diablo Immortal Game on July 13th known as the Blood Knight showcasing its gameplay and character customization.

On today’s developer live stream for the Diablo franchise, a new trailer for Diablo IV’s first season ever was released and the team showcased some of the new ways players will be able to make their characters more powerful by defeating elite monsters who drop a malalignment heart and socket them into your jewelry similar to a gem and gain really powerful abilities that enhance the player’s character regardless of class. 

The Diablo IV development team also announced the very first Diablo IV season ever and gave its players a look into a part of the battle pass on what to expect starting on July 20th, 2023.

Baldur’s Gate 3 will be coming to PC on Steam August 3rd while Playstation is releasing the game on September 6th. It was anticipated both Playstation and PC were going to release it the same day on August 31st, but the release date on both platforms have changed according to a recent announcement.

There is limited stock still available to purchase “Baldur’s Gate 3 Collector’s Edition” according to a Playstation blog and for potential Baldur’s Gate 3 players who purchased the Collector’s edition will still get the benefit of playing 72 hours early on Playstation starting September 3rd. For those who purchased “Baldur’s Gate 3 Collector’s Edition” will get emails for early access codes to play at the start of September 3rd from Playstation that comes with the game’s Deluxe Edition according to a Playstation blog.

“Lion City” is the Singapore neighborhood inside The Sandbox game. For months, The Sandbox local Singapore team has been building a new area in the game known as “Lion City” to serve as a Web3 hub for businesses to connect and share ideas.

In the “Singapore Partner Day” Lion City event, participants get to meet the team who helped build out Lion City and talented leaders in the Web3 industry.

In the “Singapore Partner Day” event, The Sandbox game Co-Founder/COO Sebastien Borget and Head of Singapore George Wong covered a keynote presentation about Web3 and the metaverse in discussions with partners of The Sandbox. Here is what The Sandbox Co-Founder/COO Sebastien Borget had to say:

“The Sandbox team has laid the foundation for expanding Metaverse opportunities in Singapore by partnering with over 30 brands and IPs. Additionally, we have certified 8 local agencies and will continue to onboard new partners, positioning Singapore as a global hub in Web3 and the Metaverse. Through the creative use of NFTs, we aim to empower talented individuals and inspire new job opportunities. On our Singapore Partner Day, we introduced these partners, shared our long-term vision, and highlighted the Lion City as a cultural hub.”

The Sandbox formed partnerships with numerous brands including Oceanus Media Capital, New Moon Studios, and various other companies serving the Singapore market. Through its collaborations with Singaporean companies in the Web3 sector, The Sandbox will be able to foster the expansion of the Web3 ecosystem in Singapore, offering ample opportunities for growth and development.

Synergy Land is described as a “Path of Exile” inspired play-to-earn ARPG game created by experienced web2 triple-A gaming developers and designers. Players take on the role of different types of heroes where they get to “explore dungeons in groups of up to four players – they work together to hack, slash, and cast their way to valuable loot in the form of NFTs and tokens”.

Synergy Studio, the company behind the game has a core team with a collective of 16 years of industry experience – with the developers having impressive resumes, working on games like Assasin’s Creed, Metroid, Ghost Recon, and Warhammer Vermintide.

The game is free to play and available from the website, or via the Elixir Games app. Synergy Land features a series of tutorial quests to help introduce players to the game.

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Land delegation allows landowners to designate others to run and manage their land, while still receiving rewards from the leaderboard rankings.

Axie Homeland is a game about building and growing on your land plot while putting your Axies to work. The main goal of Homeland is to manage a settlement as efficiently as possible in order to equip adventurers with gear and supplies to defeat waves of monsters. The more successful these adventurers are, the more rewards the landowner receives. Players need to grow crops and construct buildings, assigning Axies to take care of the work.

Right now, Axie Homeland offers the following features:

• Gather – gather raw materials from the surrounding environment
• Craft – craft powerful gear and supplies for your adventurers
• Trade – trade with native adventurers and other landowners for in-game currency
• Decorate – beautify your land plot
• Build – build the necessary infrastructure to craft gear and process raw materials
• Passive Adventure – equip and send your adventurers to battle
• Compete – strive to be one of the top players on the leaderboards
• Explore – explore the world of Lunacia as landowners turn their empty land plots into massive settlements

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Paradise Tycoon is being developed by Empires Not Vampires Ltd. They recently raised $1 Million in a seed round led by Shima Capital. Participation also came from Fomocraft Ventures, Devmons Gaming, Zee Prime Capital, Starter Capital, and FireX Capital. Angel investors Mikko Ohtamaa (from Trading Protocol), Kyn Chaturvedi (from Minterest), and Gilgamesh // 0xKepler (from Hiroba).

Empires Not Vampires Ltd. was co-founded in 2017 by Harri Karppinen and Timo Juuti. Niko Alakastari is currently CTO.

Paradise Tycoon also recently hit 250,000 downloads in April!

Get daily gaming news coverage from the Game Fund Partners LinkedIn.

Gunzilla Games, an independent AAA game studio, launched GUNZ, a blockchain-based digital economy platform fully built on an Avalanche Subnet. 

Gunzilla recently closed two investment rounds. The first raised $25 million and the second $46 million. Major participants included Justin Kan (co-founder of Twitch), Griffin Gaming Partners, Animoca Brands, Jump Crypto, RW3 Ventures, CoinFund, Shima Capital, Dominance Ventures, GSR, Kucoin Labs, Spartan Investment Group, Blizzard, Digital Strategies, Morningstar Ventures, Gamegroove Capital, Formless Capital, NGG and Huobi Group.

Off the Grid is the upcoming web3 battle royale game being built. The Gunzilla team includes Vlad Korolov, Neill Blomkamp, Richard K. Morgan, and Timur Davidenko.

Emin Gün Sirer is CEO of Ava Labs.

Get daily gaming news coverage from the Game Fund Partners LinkedIn.

Blast Royale introduces a three-week, ‘Multi-Blast’ event, offering players rewards for placing in the top leaderboard positions, and for simply playing the game. The event started on June 8th and runs through June 30th.

Blast Royale, by First Light Games, recently raised $5 million led by Animoca Brands. Blast Royale is a 30-player Battle Royale game where players are pitted against each other on a map until the last one standing emerges. The game is being developed by First Light Games, a VC-funded startup based in London. 

First Light Games were founded in 2018 and were seeded by Play Ventures and later Dune Ventures. Their vision is to define the gold standard for blockchain gaming and Blast Royale is the first announced blockchain gaming title they’re working on. 

Neil McFarland is Co-CEO – Previous to co-founding First Light was Director and Founder of ustwo Games (Monument Valley 1&2, Lands End, Whale Trail). Anil Das-Gupta is also Co-CEO – Former product owner on titles at Natural Motion, Anil also worked at Capcom on the Street Fighter and Resident Evil series. 

Blast Royale has a long list of partners since announcing a $5 million seed round led by Animoca Brands and Mechanism Capital. Among the lead investors, other prominent players who participated in the seed round include DeFiance Capital, C2 Ventures, Merit Circle, Dragonfly Capital, and more.

John Linden is the CEO of Mythical Games. NFL Rivals launched worldwide in early access more than a month ago and it is closing in on a million downloads on the Apple and Google mobile stores. It is the officially licensed Web3 game from the National Football League (NFL), and NFL Players Association (NFLPA). On average, players have played an average of two hours of gameplay per day, and so far they’ve played more than 10 million game sessions. The game has a 4.8 out of 5 rating on iOS.

Champions Ascension’s Massina is described as a theme-park metaverse where individuals can play, earn, socialize, and create new content. The Champions come from many different worlds and backgrounds, but they have all arrived in “Massina to chase a dangerous, glorious dream: to conquer the Colosseum Eternal”. Champions is a free-to-play game that can be downloaded on PC, and players are able to play a variety of different game modes:

– 1 v 1

– 3 v 3

– Free-for-all

– Mini Social Games

– PVE “Old Sally” (coming soon)

The game and team recently migrated from Jam City to a new company called Plai Labs where Johnny Casamassina is currently CCO. Chris DeWolfe is CEO & co-founder of Plai Labs – former co-founder & CEO of MySpace and Jamcity. 

Plai Labs also recently raised $32 million from a16z. Payton Kaleiwahea, the CEO and founder of Wolves DAO, recently joined Plai Labs as their newest team member!