Tower Pop raises $2.1M for Web3 battle royale/tower protection sport Omega Royale

Tower Pop has raised $2.1 million in funding for its Web3 battle royale and tower protection sport Omega Royale.

The firm goals to make use of a novel play-to-mint mannequin, the place gamers who’re devoted to the sport and rank the very best can mint the collectible non-fungible tokens (NFTs) within the sport. In that approach, the corporate hopes to carry profitable NFTs to cell video games.

Play-to-mint is a single-player net model with the sport’s first NFTs as a prize for the highest gamers. By introducing gamers to the sport early on, the group has an opportunity to indicate the participant viewers what makes the sport totally different and it helps unfold consciousness of the sport.

Omega Royale with its distinctive battle royale mode will launch in alpha on the AppStore and Google Play Store as a cell title in March. Over half 1,000,000 of video games performed already within the play-to-mint sport, and it’s off to an excellent begin with Day 1 retention at 60%, Day 7 retention at 38% and Day 30 retention at 16%.

That’s good because the play-to-mint sport gives no metagame. It is simply principally the identical degree time and again, so the founders are actually enthusiastic about getting the complete battle royale sport launched.

The funding spherical was led by Play Ventures, Agnitio Capital, and backed by angel investor Santiago R. Santos. This spherical was the second funding spherical for Tower Pop, with the earlier spherical being closed in early 2021. After this spherical, Tower Pop has raised $2.8 million in complete. The founders are cousins Fredrik Wahrman and Niklas Wahrman.

“We’re creating something completely new, something that has never been done before in the
gaming world: a Battle Royale Tower Defense game utilizing the blockchain,” the founders stated. “Our mission is to develop a game that’s fun to play for years to come and we are thrilled to have such amazing investors on board.”

The crypto gaming scene continues to be in its infancy and there’s numerous pioneering work to be carried out for a profitable sport mannequin.

“Blockchain gaming is the new paradigm shift after free-to-play. Backing Omega Royale was a no-brainer because the Tower Pop team consists of industry veterans who have previously created the hit tower defense games Crazy Kings and Crazy Defense Heroes, tackling the challenges of free-to-play at the time,” stated Santiago Santos, adviser and angel investor, in a press release. “I have great confidence that the team has top skills to shape the play-and-earn space in the best ways to serve the web3 community.”

Origins

As younger cousins, they grew up enjoying video games on the Commodore 64. In 2003, Fredrik was working in Canada and he based Silverbird Studios to make cell video games in Canada. Niklas was additionally employed to hitch the research, and so they did film tie-in video games for Warner Bros. The studio went beneath within the 2008 monetary disaster, after which they began one other studio TicBits in 2010 to make cell video games.

They began with informal video games after which ultimately switched to tower protection video games the place they might stand out. They offered that studio in 2016 to Animoca Brands. They stayed on till 2020 after which left to start out one other studio.

They began Tower Pop in 2020. With Tower Pop, they determined to remain in tower protection video games however swap the main target to multiplayer video games.

“The goal is like doing esports in tower defense,” Fredrik stated.

A brand new sort of sport

That’s why they added the battle royale ingredient to tower protection. The attention-grabbing factor about it’s combining the offensive gameplay of battle royale with the defensive gameplay of tower protection.

“We think we’ve cracked the formula for it,” Niklas stated. “We were playing it in-house for over a year.”

The group has about 10 folks, with a base in Finland. They launched a single-player model of the sport on a web site first, and they’re including the multiplayer side in Q1. As far because the blockchain half goes, they name it “Web 2.5.” Players can benefit from the sport as a free-to-play title, however they will additionally choose to spend cash and gather NFTs as effectively.

“With Web3, it allows it allows us principally to offer that have to gamers like positive they’ve with loot packing containers, the place you may truly discover an NFT and that has actual worth as a result of that worth is then decided by the gamers, identical to Magic the Gathering playing cards are offered on websites like TCGplayer.com and the worth is decided by the participant.

“So it gave gives the player much more fun and enjoyment when opening loot boxes,” Fredrik stated. “This is a great opportunity to introduce it to free-to-play gamers. Because physically gamers are quite used to opening loot boxes and such. But the value that you get can change.”

Players are about to see what it’s wish to have the multiplayer ingredient with battle royale and tower protection mixed.

“The reason why we’re doing battle royale is this. We worked with tower defense since our previous companies going back to 2012. That game was really inspiring. Like we love the Kingdom Rush series, as it was awesome games for the iPad when they came out,” Fredrik stated. “But they were premium games. But basically, we thought, ‘Why don’t they make a game like this, which is an awesome game and make it last longer because we want to play it for years because multiplayer is so much more fun.”

Overall, there are 10 gamers within the battle royale matches. On the cell platforms iOS and Android, transactions happen in a standard foreign money like in some other free-to-play sport. But extra choices can be found on an online portal. Regardless, each card within the sport might be obtained by any participant.

“We love the game ourselves and we played it with our investors, and that’s how they came in,” stated Fredrik. “We’ve been fortunate enough that they believe that despite this, despite the downturn.”