First Light Games completed a successful $5 million private token sales round, led by Mechanism Capital. This was to fund the development of its mobile game, Blast Royale.
First Light Games, a London-based gaming development company, announced today that it had closed a private token sale of $5 million to help boost development and adoption for its mobile blockchain-based game Blast Royale. Mechanism Capital and Animoca Brands were the top investors in this space, which has invested over 150 NFT-related businesses over the last year.
Funds raised will go towards the development of the game and the recruitment of top talent. Funds will also be used to develop new features for the game, including high-stakes Blast Royales and tournaments. This feature is expected to debut later in 2015, as First Light Games prepares to expand into esports.
The private sale also welcomed participation from other top crypto investment companies and angel investors including Dragonfly Capital, DeFiance Capital, Play Ventures Future Fund, Double Peak, Polygon, C² Ventures, Morningstar Ventures, DWeb3, Merit Circle, Ancient 8, and AvocadoDAO. Santiago R Santos, Nick Chong, and Santiago R Santos were prominent angel investors.
The presence of top and influential crypto investors in the company sets the foundation for a successful GameFi ecosystem on Blast Royale, Neil McFarland, CEO of First Light Games shared. With a shared vision, the investors aim to make “Blast Royale one of the best gaming titles (in the blockchain space)” and provide gamers with a “compelling and fun gameplay that makes Battle Royale game suitable for the Web3 generation,” Neil added.
Blast Royale, which was created in 2021 in the NFT/GameFi boom, offers players a way to fight in a royale survival game. The gameplay involves 30 players entering the fighting grounds in a ‘last one standing’ competition to win various rewards. NFT Items won during the game are used to create characters. Players fight and then use their rewards. The players’ meta inventory influences the quality of items carried into a match and the utility of their character.
Blast Royale has two native tokens: Blast ($BLST), which is the primary token and Craft Spice ($CS), which is the in-game earn-and-play token for the Blast Royale metaverse. You can buy equipment to enhance your character and repair equipment damaged, with the $CS token. The $CS token is earned when players participate in the battle royale matches. This can be based on performance and effort. On the Blast Royale Marketplace, the $BLST token can be purchased NFTs.
Having invested in over 150 gaming and NFT-related startups, Animoca Brands executive chairman and co-founder, Yat Siu believes Blast Royale will transform the GameFi industry with its “high quality of gameplay”.
“Given the progress so far and the First Light Games team’s strong pedigree of several iconic hit games, we believe that Blast Royale will be an appealing and compelling metaverse entry for a new generation of gamers,” Siu commented.
In a similar breath, the Principal at Mechanism Capital, Eva Wu reaffirmed the company’s goals of investing in the growing crypto gaming industry.
“When a space like crypto gaming is in its infancy, it’s incredibly important to back strong thinkers who shape how the space evolves,” Eva Wu said in an interview. “We’re very excited to work with the team [Blast Royale] to tackle what a play-to-earn world might look like.”
The Blast Royale team will launch a betanet in Q2 2022. If successful, this testnet will be used to determine if the game is ready for global release in Q3. The team also included a competitive metagame layer in the game’s gaming equipment. This gives players the ability to choose the best loadout for battle.