Darkbright Studios announced today that it has raised $6 million as part of an oversubscribed seed round. The studio plans to use this funding to create midcore game titles, with the first being life sim title Smolbound. This RPG/sim hybrid is a player-driven world with seamless Web3 integration. The studio has initiated closed beta tests for the game, with plans to launch it on the Treasure Layer-2 blockchain next year.
Smolbound features an infinite world, where players can engage mechanics including travel, farming, exploration and collection, with colorful fantasy art design. Darkbright describes the game as “a quirky marriage Animal Crossing and Raft.” It also features an extensive UGC ecosystem and live ops, along with Web3 integration that promotes player ownership.
Bitkraft Ventures led the round, with Play Ventures, Anthos Capital, King River Capital, Rockaway X, Zentry, Caballeros Capital, Gam3Girl Ventures, and Offchain Labs participating. Jonathan Huang, Principal at Bitkraft, said in a statement, “Smolbound addresses a massive and secularly growing audience of gamers seeking comfort over competition via breathing new life into the proven genre of cozy life sims. We have been impressed with the co-founders’ synergistic balance of grounded execution with creative prowess and are excited to back them in their journey to reinvent the genre.”
A life sim RPG with Web3 ownership
“PurpleSnow”, Darkbright CEO, spoke with GamesBeat about Smolbound and what sets it apart from other life sim titles. “Smolbound’s story and tone is also quite different from life sims today: it leans heavily into zany, irreverent, and the fun that comes from being unapologetically weird. Don’t let the humor fool you, though – there’s actually something much deeper going on in our story beneath the surface level, with the fate of several worlds at stake!”
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PurpleSnow says that the game’s Web3 and player ownership mechanics help elevate the in-game communities. “For us, we believe Web3 shines in building next-generation live services. That is, shared ownership with users. Web3 enables us to elevate players from ‘users’ into partners, while developers become market makers instead. Players can feel good about something succeeding because they have a hand in (and directly benefit from!) that success, and that’s what builds true win-wins with businesses and core communities.”
According to PurpleSnow, Smolbound features an easy onboarding process for players to create items. “In Smolbound, all player-created content can be NFTs: ranging from aesthetic items like clothing and houses, all the way up to bigger projects like creating your own characters, tools, and even islands. The neat thing is that these things aren’t just about tailoring the way something looks. You can define the functionality, personality, and even storylines of items you create… Content that can be monetized will be everything from selling their creations, to their winnings in events, to earnings from others exploring and engaging with their content.”
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