Illuvium has released Overworld in an effort to bring AAA quality to web3 gaming.

If you’re one of the 30,000 lucky community members chosen to try it out, a new game for Illuvium has gone live.

The “Illuvium: Overworld” private beta is the second game released by Australia-based Illuvium Labs. A gameplay trailer teased details about the universe’s backstory, and the Overworld will have you play as a ranger whose spaceship has crash-landed in the wilderness.

Players will be able to explore the Crimson Waste section of the Overworld, mine resources, and forage for assets to craft weapons and armor. They can also hunt for Illuvials, the powerful creatures used in battle in “Illuvium: Arena,” which was released earlier this year and is currently in private beta.

Illuvium’s whitepaper describes its series of interconnected games as a “universe consisting of an open-world monster collector, auto battler, and city builder” built with Unreal Engine 5 and on ImmutableX’s blockchain. It intends to release six more games over the next two decades.

A third title could also be on the way. “Illuvium: Zero” could see an alpha release before Christmas, according to the company.

Is this the first AAA blockchain game?
Web3 game developers are racing to create the first blockchain game that goes viral and outperforms traditional gamers. With popular games like PUBG, Fortnite, and Roblox attracting hundreds of millions of players each month, this is no easy task.

According to DappRadar, the most popular web3 game at the moment, Alien Worlds, had only 690,000 unique active wallets engaged with its smart contract over the last 30 days.

Even at its peak, web3 gaming poster child Axie Infinity had fewer than 2.8 million monthly players.

While awareness and onboarding remain challenges, perhaps the most significant barrier to mainstream adoption is that the games themselves have not been compelling enough to non-crypto audiences.

Illuvium believes it can change this. It wants to introduce 100 million gamers to the benefits of owning their hard-earned digital assets in the form of interoperable NFTs that can be collected, bought, sold, and used across its games. It is valued at $10 billion and has backers including AAVE founder Stani Kulechov and Sandbox founder Sebastien Borget.

“Our mission is to create the first truly AAA experience in the history of web3,” said Aaron Warwick, co-founder and game director.