Why only collect trading cards when you can enter their world?

This week at the TOKEN2049 conference in Singapore, web3 game developer Parallel Studios announced a new expansion for its popular card game, fleshing out the existing artwork into a 3D third-person shooter built on Unreal Engine 5.

With over 300,000 users already immersed in Parallel’s dystopian trading card universe, the new shooter (currently codenamed Tau Ceti) will evolve the series into a fully immersive experience, taking its name from a G-type star in a parallel solar system approximately 12 light-years from Earth.

While blockchain integration is at the core of the game, Parallel Studios has crafted an experience that will appeal to both hardcore crypto enthusiasts and casual gamers. Before diving into the realm of gaming, the world of Parallel begins with a story.

Firstly, it’s a rich intellectual property (IP) rooted in a bleak future sci-fi world, and the team at Parallel Studios has always been so committed to the idea of ​​deep narrative immersion that the founding team of six friends created a podcast to pull back the curtain and reveal its creative process.

In March 2021, Parallel debuted into the gaming world with its Alpha NFT, which remains the most traded product in its ecosystem, and by May 2023, the team launched Companions, interactive digital game-enhancing collectibles.

In October 2023, the Planetfall expansion was released, adding 120 new cards and customizable cosmetics to upgrade the game's factions vying for control of a resurgent Earth.

By June 2023, Parallel launched the Avatars collection, which includes 11,000 hand-crafted avatars (PFPs) that double as NFT "backpack wallets" that allow players to more easily store items such as skins, weapons, and in-game collectibles.

Avatar NFTs were developed based on the ERC-6551 token standard, which designates an NFT as a separate account capable of having its own wallet, a development that laid the foundation for the March 2024 launch of Parallel Colony, in which AI-based NFT characters are the main players, guided by human players.

Parallel’s world-building doesn’t stop there: By mid-2024, the team is partnering with an artist collective called the Royal Academy of Illustration and Design (RAID) — which they detailed in a company blog post — to release an NFT comic book, thereby expanding the sci-fi lore and deepening fan engagement with the Parallel universe.

Your favorite cards in 3D

Parallel’s new shooter builds on the success of its collectible card game by taking familiar characters from its 2D creations and turning them into fully rigged, animated 3D models using Unreal Engine 5.

“We repurposed the 2D art from the cards and incorporated it into this new world,” said Kohji Nagata, head of game design and development at Parallel Studios. “This is our first attempt at crossing over a card game with the wider game world.”

Nagata said the game offers a new way to interact with characters, especially for players who find the slower pace of card strategy games less appealing. Now, action takes center stage in evacuation shooters, a genre that requires players to explore detailed environments as they fight for valuable assets on a map.

This action is not just for blockchain

Parallel Studios has been working on integrating blockchain technology for a while now, but for this shooter, they’ve made it optional.

“In order to make these games suitable for web2 users, you have to lower the barriers to entry, and that includes things like gas fees and wallets,” Nagata explained. “Our goal is to make the blockchain element optional.” This approach, he said, would allow players to jump right into the game without having to worry about the technical details of web3.

However, for those who want to participate in the web3 element, the blockchain layer will enable players to mint items such as weapons, skins and characters into NFTs, and Nagata said that the biggest benefit of owning NFT items may be the ability to bring them into different gaming environments, a feature known as "interoperability."

“The idea of ​​ownership and being able to extract valuable things from one map and bring them into another — or even lose them — is exciting,” Nagata said.

But for those who don’t care about that element, Parallel is still a fun, competitive shooter.

Unreal Engine 5 lays the foundation

The game uses Unreal Engine’s high-fidelity graphics and dynamic lighting to create a next-level gaming experience, which Nagata said is a step beyond the simple graphics in early blockchain games and shows that web3 games can be as visually stunning as AAA titles.

It’s not about ego, either, Nagata said, the improvement in graphics quality is for the sake of story development and a return to the original spirit of Parallel.

“We don’t want to limit the stories and art we create to a narrow audience,” he said. “Our goal is to spread the story as widely as possible. We create more than just a simple idle game, it involves a deeper level of direction and engagement.”

The central question of Parallel IP is this: Can humanity really live in harmony despite its differences? The game's five character factions - Marcolians, Augencore, Kathari, Shroud, and Earthen - represent the different paths humanity has taken since Earth went dormant and humanity was scattered across the galaxy.

Each faction embodies a different philosophy, and they are all influenced by the environment and survival strategies, but they all share a common origin: Earth.

Dystopian narratives make players reflect on the current state of our world

Nagata said there’s a common cautionary tale in Parallel’s driving lore: humanity’s propensity to self-destruct, and in particular, while writing the game’s story with his co-founders, he thought a lot about how science and technology could lead to the destruction of the planet.

"Humans have basically destroyed the Earth by tinkering with science," said Nagata, who studied political science and philosophy in college. That's how the whole thing started, and as a result, the game reflects a warning about the dangers of unchecked behavior.

Nonetheless, he stressed, we are all here, even though we belong to different factions with very different values ​​and experiences, but “if you ask any of these factions, they will say, well, we are human beings,” Nagata explained.

This core theme of finding common ground despite division is a warning to our world that “we are all fighting each other and thinking we are different, but in fact, we all come from the same place.”

Nagata continued: “Unless we can see these differences, we will just end up in the same conflicts, and if you don’t learn from the past, you are doomed to repeat it.”

The road ahead and Parallel’s 2025 alpha release

While a release date for the new game has yet to be confirmed, Parallel Studios expects early alpha testing of the shooter to begin in 2025, with Nagata stating that PC will be the primary platform, with expansion to mobile devices and consoles possible in the near future.

As the Parallel community eagerly awaits more details, excitement is palpable, with one independent (and admittedly crypto-averse) gaming reviewer praising the existing trading card game as “one of the most promising NFT games” on the market, while web3 news outlet Bankless calls it “incredibly powerful.”

Fans can expect more as Parallel evolves, it’s no longer just a trading card game, but a high-energy third-person shooter. Imagine stunning graphics, intense gameplay, and the option to get involved in the Web3 aspect - or not, if you’re just in it for a thought-provoking story.

#token2049 #Parallel #NFT​ #GamefFi

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