Mutant Apes Take the Lead in Serum City, an ApeCoin-Powered Ethereum NFT Game

In comparison with Yuga Labs’ main Bored Ape Yacht Membership NFTs, the grimier, typically psychedelic siblings within the later and bigger Mutant Ape Yacht Membership (MAYC) set aren’t thought-about almost as beneficial or outstanding—and their decrease ground value has mirrored that sentiment.

However Novel Labs and Mutant Cartel founder Lior Messika—who’s additionally a Mutant Ape collector himself and a Yuga Labs investor by his VC agency Eden Block—is leaning into that feeling of being an outcast amongst outcasts and turning it into Web3 gaming lore, with Serum Metropolis.

Novel Labs is working with Faraway—developer of the Solana-based recreation Mini Royale: Nations—to create a metropolis builder recreation referred to as Serum Metropolis on Ethereum that can use ApeCoin as its main in-game foreign money.

“There’s an actual hole right here for Mutants,” Messika advised Decrypt in an interview of his notion of the broader Yuga Labs ecosystem.

In Serum Metropolis, Mutant Apes are the primary characters, and MAYC is amongst a couple of NFT collections that can present homeowners entry to the sport. Bored Ape holders will, as properly, together with homeowners of Novel Labs’ personal spinoff Genesis Oath and Mutant Hound NFT collections that aren’t official Yuga creations.

Proudly owning a type of NFTs is required to play the sport at launch, though a Faraway consultant confirmed to Decrypt that Serum Metropolis will progressively open up entry with every new in-game season of content material.

Constructing Serum Metropolis

Serum Metropolis will proceed and increase upon Mutant Cartel’s lore, which Messika has developed and revealed within the type of comedian strips and quick video clips over the previous 18 months. 

“We’re only a bunch of nerds developing with cool tales about our Mutants,” Messika mentioned. “The cool factor is that we’re now incorporating loads of our group members, and individuals who have been taking part in, into our canon.”

Serum Metropolis is ready in a dystopian world the place Bored Apes are the “ruling class” and the Mutant Apes are the underlings, relegated to the fringes of society as a result of they’ve consumed the Serum. The primary storyline explores the Mutant Cartel Expanded Universe and the characters Blaksoot and Darkfang, based on an announcement.

Faraway co-founder Alex Paley advised Decrypt that Serum Metropolis may have an “illustrated” or comedian book-inspired aesthetic, as seen within the first in-game screenshot embedded above.

“That is extra like a transmedia kind of play,” Paley added. “It’s a recreation, but it surely’s additionally a narrative.”

Faraway and Novel Labs have not shared loads of gameplay particulars, however Messika has joined different Web3 recreation devs in trying to push again towards the simplistic and superficial nature of early NFT-based video games. He means that Serum Metropolis shall be a richer and extra interesting play expertise.

“We imagine that, frankly, the rationale why loads of video games haven’t reached the type of adoption that all of us have been hoping for is that a lot of them had been simply not that deep,” Messika mentioned. “They’re simply not that enjoyable.”

Ape growth

Whereas Yuga Labs is wholly unaffiliated with Serum Metropolis, the $4 billion startup lets NFT holders use and commercialize their owned paintings. That open coverage in the direction of its IP has enabled numerous Ape holders to construct manufacturers round every thing from packaged items to eating places to video video games like this one.

“We’re in contact with them,” Messika mentioned of his relationship with Yuga Labs. However he added that Novel Labs “didn’t must examine in” with Yuga earlier than constructing Serum Metropolis, given the license tied to Bored Ape and Mutant Ape NFTs.

“We’re, in a way, an excellent instance of what permissionless innovation—by Yuga’s requirements and imaginative and prescient—actually seems to be like,” Messika mentioned, “and we’re actually pleased with that.”

Whereas Messika is set to supply gamers with loads of lore and narrative, Serum Metropolis gamers will even have the ability to create their very own tales and recreation property, and purchase in-game (off-chain) currencies like gems utilizing ApeCoin.

Serum Metropolis’s builders additionally see the sport as a step in the direction of interoperability—a key promoting level that Web3 gaming advocates often tout, however has confronted skepticism because of few outstanding working examples so far.

On this case, gadgets crafted in Serum Metropolis shall be NFTs that may be transferred and utilized in future Novel Labs video games sooner or later. Moreover, the Faraway Developer Platform probably opens up expanded interoperability down the road, with a press launch claiming plans for “cross-game and cross-universe occasions” as soon as Serum Metropolis launches in August.

These interoperability plans are additionally the primary cause why Serum Metropolis’s property shall be on Ethereum’s mainnet. Whereas another video games have opted for Ethereum scaling networks like Polygon or Immutable X to keep away from charges, Faraway and Novel Labs see higher profit to being on Ethereum correct.

“It was necessary for us to make the sport on probably the most interoperable blockchain, which is ETH. So, is it costly when it comes to the fuel charges? Undoubtedly,” Paley mentioned. “However is it value it to have the last word interoperable asset, as a consumer or a participant, [and] for me to say that your asset is interoperable all over the place? I believe as a participant, the reply is sure.”