Mutant Apes takes the lead in Serum City, an ApeCoin powered Ethereum NFT game

Compared to Yuga Labs’ primary Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, the more sinister, sometimes psychedelic siblings of the later and larger ones Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) sets are not considered nearly as valuable or prominent – and their lower floor price has reflected this sentiment.

But founder of Novel Labs and Mutant Cartel Lior Messika— who is also a Mutant Ape collector himself and a Yuga Labs investor through VC firm Eden Block — leans into that feeling of being an outcast among outcasts and turns it into Web3 gaming history, with Serum City.

Novel Labs works with Far away– developer of the Solana-based game Mini Royale: Nations – to create a city-building game called Serum City on Ethereum who will use ApeCoin as the primary in-game currency.

“There’s a real gap here for mutants,” Messika said Decrypt in an interview of his take on the wider Yuga Labs ecosystem.

A screenshot from Serum City. Image: Novel Labs

In Serum City, Mutant Apes are the main characters, and MAYC is among some NFT collections that will give owners access to the game. Bored Ape holders will also, along with owners of Novel Labs own derivative Genesis Oath and Mutant Hound NFT collections that are not official Yuga creations.

Owning one of these NFTs is required to play the game at launch, though a Faraway representative confirmed that Decrypt that Serum City will gradually open access with each new season of in-game content.

Building Serum City

Serum City will continue and expand Mutant Cartel’s story, which Messika has been developing and publishing in the form of comics and short video clips for the past 18 months.

“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 played, into our canon.”

Serum City is set in a dystopian world where the Bored Apes are the “ruling class” and the mutant apes are the underdogs, relegated to the fringes of society because they have consumed the serum. The main story explores the Mutant Cartel Expanded Universe and the characters Blaksoot and Darkfang, according to a statement.

Faraway co-founder Alex Paley told Decrypt that Serum City will have an “illustrated” or cartoon-inspired aesthetic, as shown in the first in-game screenshot embedded above.

“This is more like a type of transmedia game,” Paley added. “It’s a game, but it’s also a story.”

Faraway and Novel Labs haven’t shared many game details, but Messika has joined other Web3 game developers in trying to push back against the simplistic and superficial nature of early NFT-based games. He suggests that Serum City will be a richer and more appealing gaming experience.

“We think that, frankly, the reason a lot of games haven’t reached the kind of adoption that we’ve all hoped for is because a lot of them weren’t that deep,” Messika said. “They’re just not that funny.”

Ape expansion

While Yuga Labs is completely unrelated to Serum City, the $4 billion startup allows NFT holders to use and commercialize their owned artwork. The open policy of its IP has enabled countless Ape holders to build brands around everything from packaged goods to restaurants to video games like this.

“We’re in touch with them,” Messika said of his relationship with Yuga Labs. But he added that Novel Labs “didn’t need to check in” with Yuga before building Serum City, given the license associated with Bored Ape and Mutant Ape NFT.

A screenshot from Serum City. Image: Novel Labs

“We’re kind of a prime example of what permissionless innovation — by Yuga’s standards and vision — really looks like,” Messika said, “and we’re really proud of that.”

While Messika is determined to provide players with a wealth of lore and narrative, Serum City players will also be able to create their own stories and game resources, and purchase in-game currencies (off-chain) such as gems using ApeCoin.

Serum City’s developers also see the game as a step towards interoperability – a key selling point that Web3 gaming often champions but has met with skepticism due to few prominent examples to date.

In this case, items made in Serum City will be NFTs that can be transferred and used in future Novel Labs games in the future. Furthermore, the Faraway Developer Platform potentially opens up expanded interoperability down the line, with a press release claiming plans for “cross-game and cross-universe events” when Serum City launches in August.

A screenshot from Serum City. Image: Novel Labs

These interoperability plans are also the main reason Serum City’s assets will be on the Ethereum mainnet. While some other games have opted for Ethereum scaling networks like Polygon or Immutable X to avoid fees, Faraway and Novel Labs see greater benefits in being on Ethereum.

“It was important for us to make the game on the most interoperable blockchain, which is ETH. So, is it expensive considering the gas fees? Definitely,” Paley said. “But is it worth it to have the ultimate interoperable resource, as user or player, [and] for me to say your resource is interoperable everywhere? I think the answer as a player is yes.