Meet immortal game, a startup that wants to turn chess into a web3 game with NFTs, play-to-win rewards, quests, a marketplace, and more. Online chess has never been more popular and Immortal Game wants to take advantage of that trend to modernize the game.
The company has raised $15.5 million in two rounds, including a $12 million round in July. With this Series A round, TCG Crypto leads the round, with participation from Cassius, Greenfield One, Sparkle Ventures, Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s 35V, Blockwall, Kraken Ventures, and Spice Capital.
Chess players can now access the Immortal Games platform at beta.immortal.game. After creating your account, you can choose four chess pieces from your inventory and start playing with someone else.
These chess pieces have been designed by Immortal Game and represent traditional chess pieces such as pawns, bishops, knights, etc. If you win and manage to complete some side quests (such as “Win with at least 1 of my remaining horses”), you get rewards.
But there is also a metagame. Special pieces are also NFTs with different levels of rarity. You can exchange them on the Immortal Game market for ETH. The company also has utility tokens (CMT) that you can earn based on your ranking on the leaderboard and governance tokens (IGE).
From that foundation, Immortal Game has ambitious plans with league tournaments and new game modes. Behind the scenes, the company uses immutable X as their layer 2 solution on top of the Ethereum blockchain.
“An inflection point has been reached in the adoption of blockchain technology for consumer gaming,” Immortal Game co-founder and CEO Thomas Zaepffel said in a statement. “Chess is a centuries-old game that benefits from this technology, preserving its heritage and attracting a new group of players. We are excited about the support of 50 Grandmasters as we continue to expand the reach of this incredible game.”
There are currently 20 people working on Immortal Game. The company releases 30 new parts per day. Since June 2022, the company has generated 200 ETH in trading volume on its marketplace. There are 50,000 registered players with 5,000 active players per week.
That’s not a lot of people, which means there’s a lot of room to grow. Millions of people play chess on mobile apps and online sites. If Immortal Game manages to convince a fraction of those players to give its web3 chess platform a try, it could be a lucrative business.
