The autonomous city-building game being developed by Novel Labs and Faraway was influenced by Yuga Labs’ Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs.
The latter and larger Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) set’s grimier and sometimes psychedelic brothers aren’t regarded as being as valuable or significant as Yuga Labs’ core Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, and their lower floor price reflects that.
But Lior Messika, the originator of Novel Labs and the Mutant Cartel, who is also a Mutant Ape collector and an investor in Yuga Labs through his venture capital firm Eden Block, is capitalizing on the sense of being an outsider among outsiders with Serum City.
What is Serum City?
ApeCoin will serve as the primary in-game currency in Serum City, an Ethereum-based city-building game. It was created by Novel Labs and Faraway, the same developers of Mini Royale: Nations for the Solana.
One of the few NFT sets that can transport you to Serum City, the setting for the major story involving Mutant Apes, is MAYC. This includes owners of Bored Ape as well as the Novel Labs’ imitation Yuga-inspired NFT collections, such as Genesis Oath and Mutant Hound.
You’ll need one of these NFTs to play Serum City at first, but access to the game will open up as more content is introduced over time, a Faraway spokesman told Decrypt.
Building a City with Serum
The story of Mutant Cartel will be continued and expanded in Messika’s Serum City after 18 months of effort and the publication of comic strips and brief movies.
“We’re just a bunch of nerds coming up with cool stories about our Mutants,” Messika said. “The cool thing is that we’re now incorporating a lot of our community members, and people who have been playing, into our canon.”
The Bored Apes are the “ruling class” of Serum City’s dystopian civilization, while the Mutant Apes are the outcasts that are shunned by the community. According to a statement, the major plot revolves around the Expanded Universe of Mutant Cartel and the personalities of Blaksoot and Darkfang.
One of Faraway’s co-founders, Alex Paley, told Decrypt that Serum City’s opening image suggests a “drawn” or comic book-like aesthetic.
According to Paley, this work is more comparable to a transmedia play. The game is also a story, according to the description.
The game’s mechanics haven’t been extensively described by Faraway or Novel Labs, but Messika has joined other Web3 game developers in challenging the notion that the first NFT-based games were overly straightforward and superficial. He claims that playing Serum City will be more entertaining and engaging.
We believe that many games simply weren’t that deep, which is why, in our opinion, they haven’t all gained the popularity that we had all hoped for, said Messika. They are inactive and boring.
The Evolution of Apes
Yuga Labs, a $4 billion startup company that has nothing to do with Serum City, does allow NFT users to profit from their artwork. This game is only one illustration of how the business’s open IP approach has aided dozens of other businesses in using the Ape name to advertise their products and services.
Messika thinks they are still in contact with Yuga Labs. But he added that Novel Labs “didn’t need to check in” with Yuga before developing Serum City because of the license connected to the Bored Ape and Mutant Ape NFTs.
Messika said, “We’re a great example of what permissionless innovation really looks like, and we’re really proud of that. By Yuga’s standards and vision.”
A lot of mythology and stories will be provided by Messika, but Serum City users will also be able to create their own tales and game assets. They can also use ApeCoin to purchase in-game (off-chain) currency such as gems.
Serum City’s creators also see it as a step toward interoperability, which is frequently promoted as an advantage of Web3 gaming but has so far been received with skepticism because to the lack of prominent examples.
Serum City goods in this instance are Novel Future Tokens (NFTs) that may be used for various Novel Labs games. The Faraway Developer Platform might make it simpler for games to collaborate once Serum City launches in August. Cross-game and cross-universe events are in the works, according to a press statement.
The assets of Serum City will be on Ethereum’s mainnet as a result of these interoperability initiatives. In contrast to scaling networks utilized by other games to save costs, Faraway and Novel Labs believe that being on the Ethereum network has additional advantages.
“It was important for us to make the game on the most interoperable blockchain, which is ETH. So, is it expensive in terms of the gas fees? Definitely,” Paley said. “But is it worth it to have the ultimate interoperable asset, as a user or a player, [and] for me to say that your asset is interoperable everywhere? I think as a player, the answer is yes.”
Content Source: decrypt.co
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