Azra Games will begin releasing slices of its first blockchain-based game this summer, where customers can get collectible characters in a game that will evolve and grow over time.
Sacramento-based gaming studio Azra is developing online role-playing games where players own their characters and can earn tokens as they play.
“It’s a little different than a traditional game release, where designers work on it for two years, and then release the complete game,” Azra Chief Operating Officer and co-founder Sonny Mayugba told the Business Journal.
In essence, Azra is using gamification in the release of the first title, which will be called "Legions & Legends."
Later this summer, Azra will release Genesis Explorers, which are in-game digital assets. They will have some utility, and you can explore the game with them, but it is only a small slice of what will be a much larger gaming universe, Mayugba said. The first mint of characters, which are also non-fungible tokens, will be male units. Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are scarce or unique digital assets stored on a digital ledger, commonly known as a blockchain.
Female units will be minted in the fall, along with another slice of the game.
“Think of it as a pie. We’re giving you a piece of the pie. You can eat it, but it’s not the whole pie,” Mayugba said.
A larger universe of the more complete game will launch next year.
Azra launched in February, and has built up a team of more than 30 employees, many of them veteran game developers, led by CEO Mark Otero, co-founder of the Sacramento region’s most successful gaming startup just over a decade ago, KlickNation.
In May, Azra raised $15 million in an investment round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
The game will evolve over time with more slices, and it will consider feedback from users in its development, Otero said on Azra's website.
The company is developing immersive, multiplayer role-playing games linked with blockchain technology where the players own assets and can earn them. They can also pay for upgrades.
"Legions & Legends" will start as a personal computer browser game, to be followed with a mobile extension. The game is free, and play can earn the user credits.
Azra Games is one of the local technology startups selected to be in the second cohort of companies to go through the Growth Factory’s funded accelerator program.
"Legions & Legends" will have three types of characters: legionnaires, commanders and behemoths. Legionnaires are basically the foot soldiers of combat. Commanders have skills and strategies, but they are vulnerable. And behemoths are giant mechanical or biological entities that have great attack powers, but move very slowly.
The game appears to be set up so that a player wants to deploy a mix of characters to have success in battle.
And as part of Azra’s NFT strategy, the players own their characters.
“Blockchain gaming is still in its infancy, dominated by projects looking to define themselves simply by the technology they are built upon,” Otero wrote on Azra’s website. “With Legions & Legends, we aim to usher in something distinctly new, based on the bedrock of something distinctly enduring: Games that are fun.”
