Npixel’s Gran Saga: Unlimited will be the first game on the Aptos blockchain

Npixel’s Gran Saga: Unlimited will be the first game to be published on the Aptos Network, a new Web3 platform.

The game is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) and it will be based on Npixel’s original Web2 game Gran Saga. Gran Saga was one of the highest grossing games in the iOS app store.

Now the companies are bringing out Gran Saga: Unlimited to take advantage of non-fungible tokens (NFT), blockchain and GameFi. Web3 gaming will be a core focus for Aptos heading into the new year, and this upcoming title with Npixel, a fast-growing South Korean game maker, will be the first of many game projects to launch on the network, the company said.

Palo Alto, California-based Aptos has built a Layer 1 blockchain called the Aptos Network. Aptos has raised more than $400 million from investors including a16z, Jump Crypto, Binance Labs, Katie Haun, Multicoin Capital, PayPal Ventures and Coinbase Ventures.

Within the Web3 gaming ecosystem, Aptos provides the fundamental tools for verification, security, connectivity and creativity for game developers both inside and outside of the crypto space. Since Aptos launched on the mainnet just two months ago, the network has seen hundreds of thousands of users, millions of transactions, and a total value of $47 million locked up.

Gran Saga: Unlimited will be the first game title from Npixel’s metaverse ecosystem Metapixel to use Web3 and blockchain technology. It will be a sequel to the original Web2 game, Gran Saga, which has more than four million downloads.

Users will have the ability to earn in-game values ​​and create gaming gear as NFTs, which they will be able to trade freely on a variety of NFT marketplaces built on the Aptos Network. The game will first be launched for PC platforms and will later be able to access the game via mobile smartphones.

Roadmap and partnership

Testing for Gran Saga: Unlimited will begin in the first quarter of 2023 ahead of the expected global release in the second quarter.

Alpha testers will be recruited via the team’s Discord channel, which will launch soon. Several playtests will be held in the coming months to test and improve the blockchain features before its public launch.

Aptos announced the introduction of Npixel as the network’s first gaming strategic ecosystem partner back in November.

Origin of Aptos

Founded by Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, Aptos Labs is dedicated to creating better networking tools and seamless usability to bring the benefits of decentralization to the masses.

Ching has a PhD in high performance computing and works on things like finite element analysis and protein folding simulations for some of the biggest supercomputers. He also worked on search and data infrastructure to support web search, indexing and analytics.

He then worked for Facebook for 10 years, working on the analytics infrastructure stack across the company. In the last three years at the company, now Meta, he worked on the Libra cryptocurrency project and the Novi wallet. He became the technical lead of the cryptocurrency platform team, but Meta chose not to launch it due to widespread opposition.

There he worked with Shaikh, who became CEO of Aptos.

Regarding the current crypto crisis triggered by the collapse of FTX, Shaikh said in a previous interview that he came from a world where handling billions of dollars and trust was very important.

“With the unfortunate circumstances of FTX, we’re seeing how that’s played out. I think it’s impacting the entire space. But overall, we think it’s pretty healthy that bad actors are no longer going to be in the space,” Shaikh said. “And it actually provides an opportunity for people who are very serious about this technology that we talked about, who operate with the best ethics, with fantastic investors to actually step up and take advantage of this opportunity. And that is where our focus is today. Our heads are down and we keep building.”

Aptos tries to make its technology friendly to users, who don’t have to worry about being hacked and losing everything. You should be able to transfer your assets from one account to another if necessary. You should be able to customize the recovery form if you lose a crypto key. Those kinds of things are very important to a non-technical audience, Ching said. The network must also be robust enough to handle billions of users and transactions.

A strong partner

Founded in 2017, Npixel is one of South Korea’s fastest-growing game developers, achieving unicorn status with its Series B round in August 2021.

Npixels Metapixel is a next-generation Web3 gaming ecosystem that will introduce a metaverse of triple-A gaming IPs, through collaboration with Aptos. By offering quality games with original IPs, true ownership of game assets and pioneering game models, such as free-to-own, to open up a new open economy for players, Metapixel will shape how real Web3 games are perceived, Aptos said.