Can Australia's Illuvium overcome gaming's war on crypto?

While well-regarded and lauded within the crypto community, Australian-founded 'Pokemon-like' Illuvium knows its in for a fight to win over a broader market.

Early screenshots of Arena mode in Illuvium. Source: Illuvium.

“They f-cking hate us,” says Illuvium CEO Kieran Warwick.

He's speaking, of course, about the online gaming community. Which is inconvenient given he's just launched the open beta of a new video game, also called Illuvium.

His comments highlight the expected uphill battle of the Australian-founded Pokemon-but-with-crypto-game in trying to win over one of its core markets. This challenge isn't unique to Illuvium. The entire category of crypto-gaming is under fire from the gaming community, frequently slammed as a game publisher cash-grab.

Warwick elaborates that a spate of poorly-made "undercooked" crypto-based games have essentially poisoned the well ahead of Illuvium's launch.

"The VCs [who back video games] said 'ooh this is a new trend' and jumped aboard… funding dried up for good IP out there, titles that millions of gamers loved," he says.

Those studios, Warwick adds, went on to blame the bubble of crypto-gaming for their demise, leaving a raft of angry, vocal gamers for his company to contend with. He points to the company recently having its launch trailer featured on IGN.com, a significant win for the company's efforts to court gamers, only for it to receive a handful of negative comments.

However, this starkly contrasts with the reception the game has seen elsewhere on the web.

In the crypto and blockchain community its every move generates waves of coverage, largely because every monster in the game is its own non-fungible token (NFT) and can be sold for the cryptocurrency Ethereum -- which can be converted into regular tender. That's a major departure from your standard Pokemon-like where typically monsters can only be traded and not sold.

The company also caught the eye of Australia's business media when an upshot in the price of cryptocurrency Ethereum temporarily put Warwick and his brothers on Australia's Young Rich List.

Even in early-access beta on the Epic Games Store, Illuvium holds a strong 4.7 out of 5 stars, and the company hosts its own community on Discord, featuring over 169,000 enthusiastic members. Warwick says the company is close to generating its first $1 million in revenue, an astonishing feat for a game still in development.

But it's not enough.

Raising over $100 million in venture capital and on the hunt for more, Warwick knows for Illuvium to be the success that his VC backers expect it to be, it needs to win over the gaming community. With a global team of around 160 global developers, and working with his brother — and development lead — Aaron Warwick, they intend to iterate aggressively on Illuvium over the next year.

The goal: Turn it into a product that's just a good game that happens to interact with Ethereum.

So what is Illuvium?

At its core, Illuvium is a monster trainer game, similar to Pokemon. It consists of three primary PC games: Overworld, Arena and Zero.

• Overworld: This is the main game of the three. Warwick says it plays similarly to a Pokemon game with a sci-fi mass-multiplayer online game twist. While the story is still being firmed up, as it stands, you play as one of the crew of a spaceship that lands on Illuvium. The characters featured in Overworld's release trailer (below) are not playable and are the key players of the games' overarching story. As part of this game, you explore this planet and end up catching and training monsters while unravelling its mysteries. 

• Arena: This is the player vs player (PvP) game where you can battle and compete with the monsters and in other multiplayer games. It's available both on PC, but crucially will launch for mobile devices as well.

• Zero: This is a city-builder game (think SimCity,) that allows you to create facilities using resources collected in the other games and purchased using Ethereum. One key function of this title is helping the player auto-train and level the monsters caught in Overworld to help save them time.

Overworld is slated for a full release at some point next year, with the other games to follow. Even now, the games are undergoing core mechanical gameplay changes in beta. An auto-battle system in its main game for instance is currently being replaced with actual combat on the back of player feedback and some inspiration from another recent runaway monster trainer success, PalWorld.

All three games are underpinned by gacha mechanics — where players spend in-game currency on randomised items, excellent primer on them here — but also, crucially, micro-transactions. Warwick explains that roughly 20% of the game will be free for players to play. The remainder will require payments to access, which is tied to Ethereum.

If you want to catch a new monster, you pay a fee to venture out into the world for the chance to find one. Want to combine two monsters into a new one? That will also incur a fee.

The pull towards micro-transactions is deliberate, Warwick says when asked about other forms of game monetisation. This is to stop people from designing AI-controlled bots to farm the game, and in turn tank the economy through oversupply of monsters.

Given each monster can be sold for Ethereum, the stakes are higher than most games of its kind in terms of ensuring its economy remains intact.

But will it be enough?

While the focus now is on finishing and polishing Overworld, Warwick has major plans for the game's full launch. The company is aiming to use a combination of influencer marketing and esports to pique the interest of a broader player base, and capture the attention of those outside of the crypto-sphere.

"Imagine seeing Logan Paul capture a $1 million holo-Charizard. That's virtually what we're going for," Warwick said on influencer marketing.

With esports, the company plans to host its own events on Arena, tempting players with large prize pools. As previously covered on Infinite Lives, esports prize pools have rapidly declined over the past five years.

But even with a solid game and aggressive marketing, there are other roadblocks for Illuvium's success. While other game makers are looking at multi-platform strategies to ensure the proliferation and success of their title, Illuvium will only launch and run on PC, via the Epic Store.

As it stands, the world's largest PC digital distribution platform, Steam, won't host Illuvium due to its strict stance against crypto-based games. The same goes for Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. Warwick points to Arena's mobile functionality as the best workaround to this, helping it tap into a broader player base.

Even with some of the adversity it faces, Illuvium stands as one of the most unique and ambitious gaming projects to date to emerge from Australia. The game is being built via an entirely remote, global team that's been incentivised with Ethereum in addition to their salary. The Warwick brothers manage them around the clock, frequently working after-hours to steer the company. It's not slowing down either. Warwick says there's plans to expand the total number of games under the Illuvium umbrella over time.

"My wife hopes that someday this will end," Warwick quips.

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What I'm Playing: Cassette Beasts

A standard battle set-up in Cassette Beasts. Source: Bytten Studio.

Speaking of Pokémon-likes: there's been a lot of them coming out over the past few years. Temtem (Pokémon but as an MMORPG) and PalWorld (Pokémon but with gathering, crafting... and guns) are a few high-profile examples. But I wanted to take a moment to highlight a UK-founded game that I played a few months back that really stands out in the genre.

Made by Bytten Studio, Cassette Beasts is a new take on the genre, with some familiar beats. Your character washes up on a mysterious island with no memory of how they got there. Turns out they're stuck in a place outside of time and reality, a void where people or things end up when they slip through the cracks of existence. Those people have gotten together and built a settlement and a society, accepting that they're stuck in this place. Your character, however, won't accept it. This triggers a quest to learn the mysteries of the island and figure out how you can escape.

What's weirder: there are strange monsters afoot. Using cassette tapes, you can record (capture) these monsters, and then by listening to them, you become the monster and can battle as them. Most battles in Cassette Beasts are turn-based double battles (controlling two monsters at once), adding a layer of complexity not seen in your average single-battle dominated Pokémon game.

Yes, there's a type chart here too (fire beats plant, etc.). But instead of doing more damage, a move either buffs or debuffs the opposing beast. Hitting a plant type with a water move makes them stronger. Hitting a plant type with a fire move burns them and deals damage over time. You build out a team based on these types and the monsters, and use them to explore the open-world island, battling residents and Captains (Gym Leaders) who, upon defeat, teach you new exploration moves.

Aside from being the challenge that I've always craved with a Pokémon game, Cassette Beasts also features one of the best vocal background tracks I've heard in a game in a long while. For context: vocals in gaming background music can be a bit tedious looped on repeat and more often than not, don't work. That's a credit to composer Jay Baylis, who, working with vocalist Shelby Harvey, really nailed the vibe of both the game's calmer and frenetic moments.

If you're into Pokémon and are missing your fix, given there hasn't been any news on a new game in this franchise in a good while, do give Cassette Beasts a go. It's 20 hours well spent. If you need more incentive, it's likely on sale.

Worth playing if you like: Any of the Pokémon games, Temtem or PalWorld.

Available on: Pretty much everything. Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, Xbox Cloud Gaming, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Xbox Series X and Series S

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