At the beginning of 2022, Fusionist entered the rapidly evolving world of web3 gaming, emerging as a Sci-Fi AAA genre gaming ecosystem aimed at bridging the gap between web2 and web3 users. With its vision of creating the most recognized web3 gaming studio in the crypto gaming space, Fusionist has already captured the attention of many investors, gaming experts, and developers in a very short time. We at Morningstar Ventures recently added Fusionist to our portfolio and are looking forward to what the game offers and the results of its current Beta testing.
We are diving deeper into Fusionist’s gameplay, the founding team, and recent investments for this month's project review. At the end of the review, we will analyze what we like and where we see challenges for the project.
What is Fusionist
Fusionist sets out to build a scalable and sustainable Sci-Fi universe IP that fulfills all possible desires with a closed system for global players. The project aims to raise the quality benchmark of web3 games by leveraging its extensive experience and using the most advanced game development methods and technologies with Unity Technologies and Endurance Mainnet – its proprietary sidechain built on the BNB Chain. The aforementioned includes focusing on the following:
- Top-notch visual quality with professional content distribution.
- Sustainable in-game economy with a deflationary model and real-time data monitoring to control the in-game resource supply and demand balance.
- Esports compatibility of Fusionist games focuses on allowing the most skilled players to win, not those with the most expensive gear and NFTs. The team plans to create skill-based gaming disciplines such as; CS:Go, Dota 2, and other skills with the advisory of their investor FunPlus.
- Continuous engagement of loyal users and interest for different types of users with different needs (community supporters, gamblers, and gamers).
Later in the review, we will dive deeper into the Endurance network, Unity engine, and Fusionist’s Gameplay.
Founding Team, Fundraising, and Recent Successes
Fusionist has garnered significant attention from both web2 and web3 investors. The project secured a $6.6 million seed funding round, co-led by Binance Labs, and FunPlus – a prominent global game developer and publisher.
The Fusionist team comprises industry veterans with a proven track record of developing successful AAA titles. Led by Co-Founder and Game Director Ike T, who brings 17 years of experience in the gaming industry, the team possesses the necessary expertise to deliver high-quality gaming experiences.
Since the game's announcement, Fusionist has gained impressive traction, despite not having a promotional video or extensive marketing campaign. With a free-mint campaign of Alpha Prestige 500 NFTs in October 2022, Fusionist grew their Twitter followers to 90K in 4 days. Three weeks later, they grew to over 150K Twitter followers and 130K Discord members, making them one of the highest engaging projects in web3. At the time of writing, more than 780K people follow Fusionist on Twitter, and 900K joined the project’s Discord community.
Gameplay, Endurance Network, and Unity
Fusionist's gameplay revolves around mechs and planetary exploration. Players assume the role of a mechs commander, overseeing their planet, gathering resources, enhancing technology, and building mechs. Built on Unity's engine, Fusionist leverages technologies such as HDRP, DOTS, and hexagonal lighting to create visually stunning and realistic game worlds. Implementing Unity's latest features showcases the engine's potential in the AAA gaming industry.
Fusionists have integrated three AAA gameplays within the larger game. The resources one can generate from Game 1, can also be used in Game 2 and Game 3. The three game stages are:
- Colonize: Build Simulation (similar to Dyson Sphere Program, 1.7mm copies sold, 97% positive Steam rating)
- Conquer: 5actical RPG with PvP and PvE battles and with esports level tournament reward pools (similar to: Super Robot War, 19mm copies sold for total franchise, 92% positive Steam rating)
- Unite: 4x, Strategy SLG (similar to: State of Survival, produced by Funplus. 2mm DAU, $100mm monthly revenue)
These games cover genres such as build simulation, tactical RPG, and strategy SLG, offering diverse experiences to different types of gamers. With a major focus on PC gaming and cross-platform compatibility, Fusionist aims to attract real gamers, Esports teams, and high net-worth users who appreciate high-quality visuals and engaging gameplay.
Developing on Unity Engine
As aforementioned, Fusionist, developed on Unity's engine, utilizes various components like HDRP, DOTS, and hexagonal lighting to push the boundaries of game development. These technologies enabled Fusionist to create a physically realistic game world using Layered Lit materials. Screen Space Reflection further enhances the visual experience by simulating reflections and adding distinct local self-shadowing, resulting in improved volumetric perception and overall realism of light and shadow. Activating these effects significantly enhances the graphics quality, as demonstrated by comparing their activation and deactivation.
Building the Endurance Network
Endurance, a sidechain of the BNB chain, serves as an infrastructure layer for Fusionist games and social applications. The Fusionist team had two key motivations for building Endurance. Firstly, they recognized a need for sustainable and scalable gaming and social ecosystems within the blockchain industry. Endurance addresses this by providing developers with a faster and more efficient blockchain infrastructure to build decentralized applications, specifically focusing on gaming and social networking applications.
Secondly, as of today, the BNB Chain boasts the largest user base, but it faces challenges regarding network scalability. To tackle this issue, Endurance’s core developers proposed using Binance Application Sidechain (BAS) to solve this issue. The Endurance network is constructed based on the BAS design, offering significantly higher throughput, lower gas fees, and a predictable and stable fee system for users.
Endurance’s native chain utility token $ACE, has a total supply of 147 million and is used by network users to pay for nodes that process the requested operations and transactions in the ecosystem. The team has gamified the process of earning $ACE by allowing people who own Fusionist game NFTs and other users to go on missions and claim daily rewards – helping the retention and engagement of the token.
The team also released $ACE Domains on the 7th of May, where 1000 Supreme Domains were forged in a day since the launch. $ACE Domains is a decentralized naming for wallets or websites based on the Endurance Blockchain ecosystem. Similar to ENS, ACE on chain domains are for the .ace zone where participants can search for open domains and register them on the network. Already 40% of the $ACE Domains revenue is burned to achieve a better deflationary effect.
At the time of writing, $ACE's latest AU is 240K, showing flat growth over the past month.
Our Analysis:
Strengths:
- It is impressive to see the strong online presence and significant media attention Fusionist has gained in such a short period of time. Since officially announcing the project started in Q1 2022, to now, the team has managed to gain traction despite market conditions. The more the project releases, and with the Beta currently ongoing, the numbers continue to grow, again showing interest from the wider community of gamers, investors, and others in the space.
- Fusionist puts quality gaming and development at the forefront. Shown by their collaboration with Unity Technologies, where they are building three games, is a good indicator of what the game will offer in the future. Moreover, despite the complexity of the games, Fusionist wants to create opportunities for Esports teams and casual players in the future, nevertheless still in their target profile where users have more spending power compared to other casual or hyper-casual mobile gamers.
- Building Endurance as a sidechain on BNB helped the team build a large community without the release of a game. Furthermore, the token $ACE allows people playing to own NFTs and gain daily missions and rewards, making it a strong utility and great integration into the gameplay.
Challenges:
- The complexity of Fusionist’s gameplay and the integration of the Endurance network could be difficult to introduce to average players who are used to playing more casual games. The technical requirements of the game are very high as it currently stands during a recent Twitter Spaces, Beta testers were saying the game is rather difficult to play. Due to these reasons, coupled with the feedback given to the Fusionist team by our in-house guild, egld.gg, the team is currently creating tutorials and other educational materials to make it easier for players to onboard and speed up learning the game's mechanics.
What’s next for Fusionist
Right now, the team is running its Beta test, where they will gradually release the game and allow community members to be part of the process. During the Beta release, players go through the gameplay and see what they like about the game and where there is room for improvement. On Twitter, Fusionist announced the average playtime is 5 hours, and in their recent Twitter Spaces, some of the players were saying that it was not an easy game to play – much to the vision of Fusionist as they do want to make it a game that is hard to play but fun! Recently, Fusionist shared more stats on Twitter stating that the Median time played was 17 hours and 20 minutes!
After the Beta, the team will focus on the $ACE airdrop and the Game 1 and 2 launch. They will also explore avenues such as Esports tournaments and user acquisition. In Q2 - Q3 of 2024, we can all expect the Beta of Game 3 and a full launch of all the Games.
We are excited to have Fusionist as part of the Morningstar Ventures portfolio and look forward to all the accomplishments. If you want to learn more about Fusionist and follow their journey, check out the links below.
🌐 Official website: https://www.fusionist.io/
🐦 Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/fusionistio
📜 Medium: https://medium.com/@fusionistio
🕹️ Discord channel: discord.gg/fusionist
