Gaming startup Branch has received a $12.5 million seed capital round to develop a game that keeps cryptocurrencies out of sight, the company announced Wednesday.
Participants in the round include Dragonfly Capital, Polychain, Coinbase Ventures, Three Arrows Capital and Polygon Studios CEO Ryan Wyatt.
Branch co-founder Dayton Mills calls the game "a mix of Animal Crossing and Minecraft with a touch of Runescape," incorporating popular mechanics from various titles in the emerging non-fungible token (NFT) sector into a browser-based, free-to-play experience.
"I can't think of anything comparable in the play-to-earn space, because most play-to-earn games require you to buy an NFT upfront to play them," Mills said in an interview with CoinDesk. "But in our world, it's designed in such a way that you might not even know what an NFT is."
The gameplay itself will be based on islands that users can own as NFTs, each with a different composition of virtual resources. The resources can be made into usable items or structures in the game world, with the "earning" component of the game-to-earn etiquette being that users pay each other to harvest the materials for them, or resell those items as NFTs in secondary marketplaces.
Mills believes the game will attract different demographics from the global play-to-earn player base, from U.S.-based users looking to invest in virtual real estate, to Axie Infinity-like players looking to earn an income, to casual players just playing for fun.
The Seattle-based startup's approach to keeping cryptocurrency out of the picture could also be a strategic one to potentially avoid the backlash inextricably linked to NFT-based games and their accompanying narratives.
Branch says that the full release of his game is planned for the summer, with the final product ideally being developed week by week with close community participation.