NFT Card Game “Cross the Ages” Raises $12 Million in Seed Round

Blockchain gaming is evidently moving forward within the crypto industry as active titles have doubled to nearly 400 games over the past year. In February, crypto exchange FTX launched its own gaming unit while it also announced its acquisition of Good Luck Games — developer of “Storybook Brawl,” a free-to-play card battle game — just last week.

Fairly recently, another free-to-play game “Cross the Ages” (CTA) has raised $12 million during a seed round on Monday. The funds are expected to go into a development program, talent retention, and go-to-market activities for the title which likewise features digital trading cards as NFTs. Investors who participated in the round include crypto investment firm Animoca Brands, prominent game developer Ubisoft, Polygon, and The Sandbox co-founder and COO Sebastian Borget.

CTA — which is based in Singapore — is headed by co-founder and chairman Christophe de Courson, who has prior professional experience in blockchain technology and venture capital. Alongside Courson is co-founder and CEO Sami Chlagou, owner of game publisher Pixel Heart which has produced over 50 games for the likes of Nintendo, Xbox, and Playstation.

CTA’s world is set in a dystopian future based on a series of free-to-read novels where players are allowed to compete individually and in teams to collect cards. Users will also be given the option to convert their NFT cards into physical copies. Metaverse elements are targeted to be incorporated into the game by mid-2023 at which point developers, artists, and players will be enabled to create new cities and games.

The games beta version is set to launch in late May while digital and physical cards will follow later in June. An NFT marketplace and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols suite will, likewise, be introduced down the line. The DeFi protocols will provide users with access to farming, pooling, and bonding for optimized trading options within the game’s infrastructure.

“The CTA DeFi product will be accessible via the main user interface, but it will operate as its own standalone platform,” explained Chlagou. “We want to keep the gaming experience somewhat separate to ensure that the more commercial aspects of the CTA experiences do not distract from what will be a dynamic and unique metaverse gaming experience.”

In a statement, Sebastian Borget furthered that “Sami’s vision of ‘Cross The Ages’ around creating an innovative, multidimensional entertainment format which players can participate in and own – between books, collectible trading cards in both physical and NFT formats and video gaming – is truly unique, and he has not only a top-notch team but also a track record of successfully shipping games.”

At the moment, the CTA team has 140 professionals consisting of artists, authors, developers, and business experts. Chlagou hopes to grow its pool to more than 200 by the end of the year, and reach around 250 by mid-2023.

Source: CoinDesk