Most promising project for accelerator:
Cosmic Universe
Cosmic Universe is a fully blockchain-based MMORPG which is evolving to become an open-world 3D fantasy metaverse. The aesthetic feels beautiful and inclusive, with the potential of attracting varied demographics to the game.
The project has evolved in a number of ways: it had originally started with the plan to be an RPG top-down game similar to Age of Empires or Axie Infinity; they changed up their NFT aesthetic from an original 2D cartoon to a new 3D one which will be playable as an avatar; and a huge switch from Unreal Engine 4 to 5, which required much development work.
The Vietnam-based developer is passionate about user experience, and is airdropping new playable NFTs while still allowing the old ones to be users as portraits in art galleries. They are committed to creating hundreds of quests to keep it interesting, but they want to avoid killing and raiding to keep it fun and light and mentally healthy to play, placing them more in the realm of Blizzard's Palia game.
The center of the game will be worldbuilding, where players can harvest resources and unlock blueprints for a wide variety of buildings and structures. The customizability of the interior and exterior of buildings will make it a true metaverse where people can socialize and could be able to charge people to use their spaces; for example, they could host a potion shop or fantasy-themed nightclub, where people can pay an entry fee to participate.
They have a little bit of traction, with a 6.2k-sized very engaged Discord channel and 13.5k Twitter followers, and a first demo coming out next week showing off the harvesting mechanics and interaction with the sandbox environment. Their MAGIC token is on Coingecko, and they have a COSMIC utility token used in-game, to avoid disrupting gameplay with continual transactions. The track is to have the multiplayer component with blockchain integration developed by August; releasing Elf NFTs is ready, but they want to wait a few months for the market conditions to become more favorable and then to promote Elf Land sales immediately after that.
They have been extremely persistent and have fortified their team with 25 people, including a Defi expert who will help them build cryptocurency index funds and a multidex aggregator, potentially offering defi options not currently on Harmony. They also hired game developers with experience in building 3D Unreal metaverses playable on different frame rates, and a loremaster who has wireframed hundreds of quests and created a graphical encyclopedia for the game.
Cosmic Universe also has the philosophy that the game must above all be playable on a variety of systems, and they hope to balance the gorgeous look of what is possible in Unreal 5 with the need of people to be able to play it on slower systems; they will keep graphics low-poly and stylized, and create download packages, taking it out of the browser entirely. They claim that the teaser trailer is a real play and not just a simulated video, and if that is true, the game will be smooth.
They are a team of 25, which is not small and therefore is promising for development of such an ambitious project; they have proven the ability to flex up and down as needed and to fundraise. Last November they did a 2D NFT Wizard sale which generated almost $900k in revenue which amounts to about 8 months of development expenses. The next Minimum Viable Product will be 3 mini-quests, featuring multiplayer capability and blockchain integration, with 100 people on the server using their avatars to harvest and build. They project that it will be ready by the end of the year, which would take $500k in development costs. If the market rebounded and they release their Elf NFTs and if they sold out like the Wizards, they would garner over $2.5M; this may well be possible, as their February land sale sold out in 90 seconds and generated $1M.
If we can partner them with a VC firm which has funded other blockchain games and which has a strong commitment to gamer experience, they could be set up for success; they are hoping for a $4M raise which would give them a $4M runway. Although this is ambitious, their past releases, community strength, and focus and mission of the founders makes it a most promising project for an Accelerator program.
Runner-up:
Rocket Monsters
Rocket Monsters has a beautiful space aesthetic, built in Unreal 5. It is a game-centric shoot-and-earn dapp rather than being a gamified DEX, and their ethos is to first and foremost make a compelling game. The premise of the game seems like it would have universal appeal, and that plus the space theme of it are promising for adoption.
Their team is admittedly "tiny," and they are hoping for a $500k - $1M raise to get the game onto Mainnet where they can also launch a new planet; without the raise they will keep going forward at a slow pace. They will prioritize the mobile game for the rest of this year,with the hope of getting onto testnet by the end of the year.
Their live mint is their slowest one ever, whereas they have previously sold out of most of their NFT drops. They are building a marketplace, so that they can link out from their downloadable game to Open Sea and mint in-game. Token launch will be on Hermes.
They are still at their formative stages, and their August NFT drop will be telling. The drone prototype was over 3GB in size and was extremely heavy to run; if it is not released in low poly, it may be challenging for older systems, and it will remain to be seen how multiplayer will perform in this environment.
Most promising project for a smaller grant:
Tranquility City
Tranquility City bills itself as a "social game," underselling the metaverse aspect, but it looks and feels like a metaverse. The goal of the city is to build customizable places where one can chat and DM friends in-game, making it one of the very few Harmony projects with social capability (which Defi Kingdoms currently lacks). They also have an ethos of interoperability, hoping to implement portals to other projects and aggregate swap protocols and bring other dapps into the game.
While people can build on TC, the developers understand that full customizability may be chaotic, so they plan on allowing users to tweak prefabricated assets and add their NFTs as pictures on the wall of apartments. They feel that people will need an incentive to come into the games, so their plant NFTs will have a play to earn component with daily quests that would reward people in LUMEN.
This project had what many other ecosystem projects lacked: traction. They were awarded a grant and their game is playable on mainnet: one can navigate easily in the environment, and land sale and chat are functional. Next up will be a play to earn game and instanced housing.
The game is also very playable; even on older systems, the build loaded smoothly; they credit webGL, a low poly count, low bloat, and few API calls to their accessibility.
On the downside, they got rekt on UST which eviscerated their treasury, and one of their lead developers, Gainz, left as a result. Although the community became less active in Disocrd, the community rallied behind the project after the collapse of UST/LUNA and voted to support a new NFT launch to bring in another $70k. This would enable them to hire web3 developers and artists, and to pay for server costs. As the project was built through a series of "experiments," it is not cleanly sectioned or commented, which would complicate integration with other projects without assistance and training. Finally, while the remaining founders are passionate about bringing the project to completion, they hope to consider the project ready to hand off to a DAO in Q4.
Also Great:
TCG World was ruled out because they are launching on other chains, potentially before Harmony.
Mars Colony has an impressive team and land sale. Quests are occasionally functional and include a terrible play to earn grind game. They are going to other chains and posted a Polygon deck on our talk.harmony.one page.
Evoverses has lovely videos which they promise reflect gameplay, but their fantasy theme is slightly more niche than Rocket Monsters, and their staking game launch was ugly and chaotic. It will be interesting to see if they can deliver on their great promise.
Most promising pure metaverse play:
(Blue)verse
https://nearverse.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Build/index.html
https://www.notion.so/harmonyone/Harmony-BlueVerse-7e96d16123c54a18b82c4ea6d86e626d
https://open.harmony.one/strategy-roadmap/launch-dates-weekly-updates/harmony-blueverse
https://talk.harmony.one/t/harmony-blue-verse/12852?u=blockchainbroker
This project is starting as a metaverse rather than as a NFT launch or game. It hopes to be a "Grand Central Station" portal to game- and metaverse-related Harmony ecosystem projects.
Because they are Unity/webgl, it looks good in-browser and does not require a current gaming laptop to run. Oddly, the view currently does not allow you to look up or down, which the developers claim is for simplicity of user experience.
They claim to have a team of 30-50 developers, who have other clients as well.
They hope to monetize the user base through partnerships with defi staking platforms; with giving DEXes a piece of stakes and rewards, by issuing tokens, and perhaps by adding affiliate links to track wallets. They also hope to charge up to $75,000 to feature each other ecosystem partner through a portal, design, and avatar. They request help with business development, introductions to Harmony games and DEXes, and up to $350k in additional grant money to finish the project.