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Unicorn Labs, the development team behind Web3 massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Search for Animeratoday announced the launch on ImmutableX, a platform for building and scaling Web3 games on Ethereum.
By partnering with ImmutableX, Search for Animera developers can ensure players enjoy the convenience of fast transactions and zero gas fee minting and trading combined with the robustness of Ethereum’s built-in security, the team said.
Unicorn Labs will also benefit from Immutable’s zero-knowledge (ZK) scaling solution, which has been in production for over two years, allowing them to focus on delivering a game.
Andrew Sorokovsky, VP Global Business Development at Immutable, said in a statement: “We are committed to finding the most innovative games to partner with to enhance and broaden our web3 ecosystem. Our goal is to bring cutting-edge gaming experiences to players around the world, and partnerships with projects like Search for Animera bring us closer to achieving that goal. By seamlessly combining AAA gaming with the speed and scalability of blockchain technology, we will unlock a world of new possibilities for gamers in the coming years.”
Search for Animera is an Interplanetary Conquest, Exploration, and MMORPG. Set in a distant galaxy, the game tells a cosmic story of exploration, conquest and colonization of unique planets, new life forms and immense resources – all presented in a graphically superior highly engaging game environment.
Within the Animera universe, players will explore and colonize the Nubera galaxy, full of unique planets and life forms; navigating the challenges of a battle of species in space; and experience a thriving player economy in an ever-expanding sandbox, as you teleport into deep space and immerse yourself in a mix of procedurally generated and handcrafted worlds.
There are three different game modes to choose from, each focusing on specific personas, including Explore Mode, Story Mode, and Star Siege Mode.
Animera was built from the ground up on Unreal Engine 5 by Unicorn Labs, a team of experienced game developers, marketers and smart contract builders. Prior to working on Animera, co-founder and production lead Thomas Dimi spent six years contracting for Konami Gaming on franchises including Metal Gear Solid and Pro Evolution Soccer, while co-founder Adil Khan spent ten years focusing on digital marketing strategy, performance marketing and analysis, primarily at Wunderman Thompson.
Designed to be as accessible as possible to mainstream gamers, the game uses Magic Link, a set of tools available on ImmutableX that helps developers make Web3 onboarding hassle-free, secure, and non-custodial.
Magic Link enables seamless onboarding of crypto-nascent Web2 gaming audiences by providing a much simpler user experience. Users can launch the game by simply logging into their game client, while the tool automatically creates a fully integrated, non-custodial Web3 wallet for them.
Animera will be able to offer players true ownership of their assets, as well as the ability to be more directly involved in the creation of new content. The company said this puts the power back in the hands of the player and revises the microtransaction model for releasing new content that has long frustrated many gamers.
“I believe the tedious prerequisites to actually play most current Web3 games, including gas fees, additional crypto-specific know-how, and glacial transactions, have made the web3 gaming experience overly complicated. We’re super excited to partner with ImmutableX, a protocol with a very similar ethos to ours, to change this and bring gamers back to what really matters: the pure and simple thrill of actual, engaging gameplay,” Khan, co-founder of Unicorn Labs, said in a statement.
In Q1 2023, Search for Animera will also launch its Genesis Character non-fungible token (NFT) collection on ImmutableX, consisting of its own in-game characters, each belonging to unique factions from the game’s escape history, and equipped with customizable cosmetic improvements. skins, ships and more. These NFTs offer the added benefits of early access to the alpha and beta versions of the game, and while the game is free-to-play, Genesis Character Collection NFT holders will have exclusive access to the Story mode gameplay, the company said.
Unicorn Labs will soon unveil its whitelisting experience, Program X, aimed at selectively onboarding quality players and contributors, including gaming guilds, influencers, DAOs, and avid gamers, into its community.
Players can also look forward to a public beta test of the PvP gameplay, with the game fully released by the end of 2024. In addition, the Search for Animera team plans to release their native token, ANIM, in Q2 on both centralized and decentralized exchanges.
Unicorn Labs has 12 full-time employees and six independent contractors. The studio was started primarily between the founders, along with a small stream of capital from Apex Digital VC and angel investors in their friends and family network.
An uncontrolled AI in a dystopian future within a sci-fi environment has always remained a thought worth pondering as we have been sci-fi fans. Applying open-world concepts to such MMOs, the company said it felt gameplay was always limited with a heavy focus on grind-based gameplay, making these games somewhat unappealing to outsiders.
With Search For Animera, the founders said they are building more exciting gameplay with a heavy focus on ground or space combat, while including meaningful exploration of the game’s distant galaxy, with each planet connected to the lore of the game, as this is something that has been deprived of sci-fi fans in today’s popular game titles.
“Our goal with SFA has always been to create a universe that gives players an immersive experience in the outside world. In order to provide our community with a truly engaging experience, we knew that everything in the game had to be designed and developed with sci-fi realism,” said the founders.
They added: “To ensure this, we built hyper-realistic ships with 4k textures, character models with high polycounts, realistic control rigs, flight controller-based flight systems, ballistic engine-based firing mechanics and PathTracer for realistic lightning effects, Niagra fabrics systems and much more.”
They acknowledged some backlash from gamers against NFTs. The company said NFTs have been treated as extremely speculative investments where they are hyped and resold to the next buyer, with no regard for in-game utility. This has basically attracted the speculative crowd and not the full gamers. Essentially, gaming-related NFTs should equate to in-game assets and allow users to progress through a game.
“Web3 game economics models are less than three years old and, in hindsight, play-to-earn models painted an unrealistic picture that all gamers could benefit from a game,” the company said. “It takes the thrill out of playing and creates a pseudo-financial product that traditional web2 gamers want nothing to do with while playing a game.”
Web3 games have a poor onboarding experience, where regular gamers are expected to create Metamask or other wallets, load balances before experiencing the game. This creates a huge point of friction. The uncertainty associated with paying gas charges along with the network congestion time to handle a game related NFT (in-game asset) would be a giant deal breaker for any Web2 gamer, who is accustomed to a seamless experience.
“At SFA, we are addressing these concerns by building a quality game where the NFTs are in-game assets with immediate utility,” the company said. “By simplifying the onboarding experience (creating a wallet in the back instead of the front) and taking gas costs out of the equation via IMX chain selection, we are poised to onboard regular gamers who want to play the game. be able to play without friction and continue to enjoy a game through gas-free experience on IMX chain. More importantly, the game’s economy is designed to let users increase their inventory/collectible list rather than dumping assets. Users who are financially rewarded through the game are: token holders, those who win from competitive elements and loyal gamers.
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