Galaxy of Heroes' designer to redefine combat collection RPGs with web3
Legions & Legends' first mint this summer
Following its $15 million funding announcement in May, which was led by a16z, US startup Azra Games has now revealed Legions & Legends.
Co-founded by designer Mark Otero — previously at EA’s Capital Games, working on the much admired and top grossing Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes — Legions & Legends is an RPG collection battler that will involve “legions of commanders, monstrosities and war machines”.
Also inspired by IP such as Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer 40K, the game is set in the Corvus Galaxy, with the Genesis Explorer set of NFTs dropping on Ethereum this summer, prior to the game’s 2023 launch on an as-yet-undisclosed EVM-compatible L2.
However, the long term vision for Legions & Legends is that it will encompass multiple titles across multiple chains.
Players will first get a taste of the experience with playable content expected in Q3 2022 during which NFT holders will be able to generate resources that can be used to craft legendary combat units by staking and playing exploratory missions
As well as Otero, other co-founders at Azra Games include game director Michael Noriega, and VP of creative development Neel Upadhye, both previously also at EA working on titles such as Apex Legends, Dragon Age and Mass Effect, and COO Sonny Mayugba and CTO Travis Boudreaux, both previously at Swimply.
This Substack is sponsored by Hiro Capital, which led the $35 million Series B funding into game development acceleration platform Incredibuild.
Ronin Bridge Reopened news
Sky Mavis has announce that the Ronin-Ethereum bridge has reopened following its 29th March hack.
As well as one internal and two external audits, various additional safeguards have been added, including a $50 million daily limit and a circuit breaker system for large withdrawals.
In particular, this means transactions of more than $10 million will require 90% of Ronin validators node to sign the transaction as well as a manual human review, all of which is subject to a 7-day review period.
In more positive news, Sky Mavis says it’s on track to release its Land Staking feature this week.
Funding news
My grinding in Wildlife Studios’ Castle Crush has (temporarily?) stalled at the Pirate level but as the game prepares for its Avalanche-based NFTs and token to go live in July and August respectively, the developer is gaining guild support.
Fellow Brazilian outfit BAYZ has just invested $250,000 and will help Wildlife in terms of marketing the game’s new web3 features in the local market and potentially more widely in the LATAM market too.
Splinterfest! news
Splinterlands is taking AxieCon in Barcelona and raising it: Splinterfest will be taking place in Las Vegas.
The first physical conference for the TCG is happening on 8-9th October at the HyperX Arena in the Luxor Hotel & Casino.
Tickets prices are currently being worked out but interested parties are recommended to start booking their rooms: there will be some in my own household pushing for attendance.
Developer Tools news
Although best known for its consumer-facing CeFi product, Crypto.com is increasingly pushing its EVM-compatible DeFi and game development Cronos ecosystem.
Based on the Cosmos SDK, it’s announced that Cronos’ modular suite of game developer tools and services called Cronos Play now includes
an Unreal Engine plugin,
a C++ SDK, plus
integration with ChainSafe’s web3 Unity gaming SDK.
In addition, development on Cronos is supported via Moralis’ more generalized web3 suite of tools.
It’s claimed Cronos is used by more than 250 developers — including Decentraland casino operator Decentral Games — for dapps with 800,000 users, while Crypto.com and the CRO token that underpins the ecosystem has 50 million registered users.
Partnership news
There isn’t a lot of NFT activity on the Elrond blockchain so it makes sense for projects to work together, which is exactly what arcade shooter Cantina Royale and PFP collection Elrond Apes are doing.
The next 3,000 NFTs in the 10,000-strong Elrond Ape collection will be minting in late July, with owners gaining access to passive income via a lending mechanic.
Built using L2 multichain protocol Verto, Cantina Royale is also planning to create interoperability for other PFP collections, with Bored Apes Yacht Club due to gain support in Q3 although — somehow — I can’t see BAYC owners flocking to play a game on other chain with their precious NFTs.