Web3 game ‘Illuvium: Overworld’ starts private beta

Illuvium Labs has launched a private beta for “Illuvium: Overworld” – the second of six Web3 games the team has planned over the next two decades. An alpha release of “Illuvium: Zero” could also be rolled out before Christmas.

A new game for Illuvium Labs has gone live for the 30,000 lucky community members selected to try it out. “Illuvium: Overworld” is the second game by Australia-based game company. 

Its gameplay will involve playing as a ranger whose spacecraft has crashed amid the wilderness. Players will be able to explore a section of the Overworld, mine resources, and forage for assets to create weapons and armor. They can also hunt for Illuvials, the powerful creatures used for battling in “Illuvium: Arena,” which came out earlier this year and is also in private beta.

According to Illuvium’s whitepaper, there will be a series of interlinked games built on Unreal Engine 5 and ImmutableX’s blockchain as a “universe consisting of an open-world monster collector, auto battler, and city builder.”

A third game could also be launched soon. The company said “Illuvium: Zero” could have an alpha release before Christmas. It also plans to release an additional six games over the next two decades.

Web3 gaming is still inferior to the traditional game industry, with popular games like PUBG, Fortnite, and Roblox attracting hundreds of millions of players per month. According to DappRadar, the most popular Web3 game at the moment, Alien Worlds, had just 690,000 unique active wallets over the past 30 days. Axie Infinity, a Web3 gaming pioneer, reached less than 2.8 million players a month at its peak. Illuvium Labs believes it can change that.

“Our mission is to build the first truly AAA experience in the history of Web3,” said Aaron Warwick, Illuvium’s co-founder, and game director.

Backed by AAVE founder Stani Kulechov and Sandbox founder Sebastien Borget, Illuvium Labs has a valuation of $10 billion and wants to introduce 100 million gamers to the advantages of owning their hard-earned digital assets in the form of interoperable NFTs that can be collected, bought, sold, and used across its games.

Meanwhile, Aave Companies announced last week an acquisition of Sonar, a mobile metaverse app whose users pilot NFT-linked avatars through digital worlds, with plans to integrate its Lens social media protocol with the platform. Following the deal, Lens Protocol will be integrated into a game app with about 20,000 monthly active users.