Aradena (en)

New big game project and future hit among Web3 games.

Aradena project overview:

Aradena: Battlegrounds https://www.aradena.io/home/ — is an entertaining medieval fantasy strategy game that combines a collectible card game (TCG) and a turn-based strategy game in which players create and train their army of NFT characters and fight against other players.

Players are rewarded with loot chests that contain various rewards based on their performance in combat, including tokens and NFT collectibles - these can be traded on the home market or added to the player's army at the barracks.

The project attracted our attention because it stands out among the general mass of games. The game features excellent thoughtful gameplay, it is really interesting to play, which is confirmed by the great attention from the major players in the crypto industry.

Aradena: Battlegrounds offers two main game modes:

Constructed Monthly Ranked allows players to compete in ranked matches against other players. This mode is always available. Through ranked matches, players can improve their strategies and earn silver coins to buy new cards.
Weekend Ranked is the main mode for earning AG tokens. Users can enter the league on Friday and play 12 games over the weekend for a total of around 6 hours or 2 hours each day.

In order to participate in PvP battles and receive rewards in Warriors of Aradena: Battlegrounds, players must own at least one NFT Warrior.
Those can be purchased on the Opensea marketplace https://opensea.io/collection/warriors-of-aradena

Players can lend their warriors for passive income through the recruitment system.

Gameplay example of Aradena game:

First of all, developers focus on interest in game mechanics: now most members of the gaming community spend money in order to play it because they like the gameplay and a small number of players earn money only from tournament victories - this balance ensures a stable game economy.

To summarize: an interesting game using blockchain technology, which is primarily fun to play. A good example of a project that takes the best of Web2 and Web3 technologies to create a quality game.

Team

The project team consists of 16 developers working full-time and connects powerful partner Blowfish Studio, in order to scale if necessary. Each team member has a LinkedIn profile that can be verified.

Aradena Team

Liam Bacon is a director of the company.
Liam is a competent technology entrepreneur. Previously, he founded a tech start-up specializing in e-learning gaming applications and received M.A. in Entrepreneurship from UCL, ranking 8th in the QS World University Rankings.
Marcus Sakamoto - Head of Operations.
Markus has over 25 years of experience in operations, finance and crypto. Previously, he was Head of Japanese Indices Trading at Nomura Securities. More than 5 years of experience in senior positions in blockchain and cryptocurrency mining startups.
Jacob Horgan - is a product director.
Previously, Jacob founded and ran a gaming agency that successfully developed and launched a strategy board game. He also has professional experience in software and blockchain development, as well as an honors degree in electrical engineering from the University of Leeds.
Lee Snodgrass – production
Previously founded a game studio and launched the online first-person shooter (FPS) Days of War on Steam. Has previous experience as a studio manager, as well as in game development, production and marketing.
Xiz Figalan - tokenomics.
He has worked in blockchain games since 2018, including leading the tokenomics of several Web3 games such as Rooster Wars. He has aslo experience in blockchain and front end development for several startups.
Jake Hughes - is a partnership and bizdev.
Previous experience in brand marketing, new product development and managing multi-million dollar partnership deals. Most recently specialized in go-to-market solutions and content marketing for Momentum 6, a Web3 value-oriented venture capital.
Liam Hill - is the lead game designer.
20+ years in game design in leading roles at game development companies such as Lionhead Studios, Pandemic and Eidos.
James Wackenham - is a senior game designer.
He has recently been a co-author and lead game designer on Gods Unchained, the first hit game on the Immutable X blockchain!
Josh Long - is a gameplay designer.
Programmer and designer with 5 years of C++ and Unity development experience with RedKite Games and Rockstar awards for PlayStation development. Previous experience in both front-end and back-end development, from gameplay to creating the Labyrinth engine, and as a lead designer in previous industry roles. MComp in Computer Science for Games.

Consultants and advisers

Benjamin Lee - co-founder and managing director of Blowfish Studios, has led the publication of over 50 titles for consoles, PC and mobile for 14 years.
Carey Chico - has led game development for over 20 years, including executive producer and senior game leadership roles at major US game developers such as Crystal Dynamics, EA/Pandemic Studios and Activision. Carey is a product development leader and a visionary who has successfully led the product's vision, roadmap and implementation.
Tadej Vengust - is one of the leading European blockchain developers and the CTO of Apillon, a web3 blockchain development platform that creates advanced blockchain solutions.
Tadej brings to Aradena his deep technical knowledge, including extensive blockchain development experience and experience with Amason Web Service and infrastructure, to ensure a smooth and secure user experience.
Mohammed Ezeldin - is a tokenomics consultant.
Head of Tokenomics at Animoca Brands. Mathematician and tokenomics expert who has been helping startups build a scalable token economy on Web3 since 2018. Mohamed understands perfectly how to use mathematical models to stimulate positive user behavior in the ecosystem.
Mark Cheng - is a game economics consultant.
Mark Cheng is a founding partner of GameFi Ventures, Senior Advisor to Animoca Brands and works with many well-known Web3 games such as Phantom Galaxies.

Summary: a young and ambitious team, whose employees have implemented Web3 projects and have huge experience in it, the team is strengthened and balanced by the most experienced advisors from the traditional gaming industry and the field of blockchain games.

Investors and partners

Early investors and key partners

Aradena: Battlegrounds is being developed by a young and ambitious Litoja Labs team together with Blowfish Studios https://www.blowfishstudios.com/, a well-known and experienced Web2 game developer who will bring its experience in game creation and help partners.
Blowfish Studios - is an award-winning Sydney-based game developer and publisher. They have created a ton of high quality multi-platform console games, including their latest hit Phantom Galaxies.
The first lead investor of the project was the famous Animoca Brands https://vc.ru/u/1304906-crypto-smi/561624-animoca-brands-vedushchaya-kompaniya-na-rynke-blokcheyn-igr, which invested $1.5 million in the project in Pre-seed round.
Animoca Brands - is a digital entertainment, blockchain and gamification leader that works to advance digital property rights and promote open metaverses. Their specialization is investing in game projects, they had a hand in most of the names that have shot in recent years: Axie Infinity, OpenSea, Dapper Labs, Yield Guild Games, Alien Worlds, Star Atlas.
It is important to understand that Animoca Brands is not just an investor here, they are supporting the project with tokenomics, gaming experience, ecosystem, marketing and more. They invested in the Pre-Seed round, having received equity (a share in the project), and now they enter the Private round, receiving tokens, and we also enter this particular round. Thus, they have invested a lot of money in Aradena and are seriously involved in the development of the project at every stage.
Another top investor who entered the Seed round: Jump Crypto https://jumpcrypto.com/ is a crypto division of the American exchange giant Jump Trading Group, specializing in high-frequency trading strategies, with 700+ employees working in offices in Chicago, New York, Austin, London, Tel Aviv, Singapore, Shanghai, Bristol, Gurgaon, Gandhinagar, Sydney, Amsterdam and Hong Kong. The portfolio of this investment fund includes such popular crypto projects as Aptos, Sui, Polygon and Solana blockchains, ByBit centralized exchange, hashflow decentralized trading platform, Chiliz fan token creator.
The strategic key partner of the project was the Immutable X gaming blockchain, which allocated a large grant to the developers at the very early stage, giving the team expertise and incubation. There is a whole section dedicated to Aradena on their website. The game will be released on this blockchain.
Incubation by Seedify Fund https://seedify.fund/
Since August 2021 they have been supporting the project by providing assistance in the areas of game design and marketing. Seedify also has a portfolio team of 20+ employees who are always ready to help Aradena when needed. IDO will take place on their launchpad in June 2023.

The marketing department of the project works well with the game guilds. Partnerships have been made with Avocado Guild and Good Games Guild to help expand the Aradena gaming community.

Everything is in order with investors and partners, the project is of interest to both top investors and game industry leaders and Animoca Brands generally focuses on them very much.

Token utilities

$AG token

Battlefields and quests

Shop - Cards and decks
$AG can be used to purchase digital assets, specifically gold-tier assets (i.e. NFTs), from the Aradena store.
In the in-game store players are given the opportunity to purchase seasonal packs containing a set number of gold-level assets. In addition, players can purchase a specific Gold Tier card from a dedicated Rotary Shop slot which is updated regularly to highlight new Featured Cards.
Shop - Cosmetic (external) improvements
$AG can be used to purchase various in-game cosmetic upgrades, including in-game HUDs, map backs, profile icons, battleground spectator modifiers and in the future, warrior cosmetic upgrades.
Arcana - Union
$AG can be used to combine duplicate Silver Tier Assets (i.e. assets locked in the game) to create Gold Tier Assets. Please note that the amount of $AG and the number of duplicate silver cards needed to complete the fusion increases with the rarity of the card being crafted.
In order to complete the merger the cost of $AG is algorithmically calculated to regulate the supply of cards in circulation at all rarity card levels.
Participation in tournaments
Players who do not own warriors can use $AG to participate in weekly limited-time events (LTE) and uninvited tournaments in the Aradena gaming ecosystem.
The cost of participation in the tournament depends on the duration of the tournament and the expected size of the prize pool.
Quest improvements
$AG can be used to allow warriors to automatically complete or complete quests after updating Unlocking the Arcane quests.
Warriors will have the option to pay $AG to guarantee quest success (i.e. auto complete 50% of the quest) or auto complete the entire quest. The $AG cost for choosing any of the options above will depend on the quest's success rate, remaining duration and the oracle's $AG cost.
Silver conversion
$AG can be used to purchase additional in-game Silver, which can be used for various in-game features such as upgrading the Warrior and enabling the Arcana - Sacrifice (detailed below).
There will be limits on the daily conversion of $AG to Silver to prevent mass usage of the features, however the mentioned limit will be particularly high.

The following features are under ongoing discussion and can be changed after release:

Random Number Generator (RNG)
$AG in combination with goods can be used to manipulate the random number generator in terms of card purchases and recruitment.
By combining $AG and goods players can increase the chance of getting a unit or strategy card from a particular faction.
Example: Deposit X potions with Y $AG to increase the chance of getting a Merchant Marine card by Z %.
The same logic applies to recruitment: a warrior who is closer to a certain faction has more prominent traits of that faction, such as a trident for the merchant fleet.
Mercenary system
$AG will be used to initiate a set of game avatars for future generations.
$AG recruitment costs will be algorithmically calculated to prevent oversupply in the warrior ecosystem.
Input factors are not limited but include a number of active players per day, estimated number of active players per week, short-term and long-term moving average of the next generation warrior and the length of the game season.
Please note that the current Warriors and Women of Aradena will always have a unique play value that will go hand in hand with the increase in the number of playable avatars.
Guild Formation
$AG can be used to create and upgrade in-game guilds (Houses of Aradena) that allow players to unite their warriors under the same in-game group identity.
Please note that the $AG formation cost will be used to create an official banner and online name to identify the house and be rewarded for the overall achievements of its members.
Arcana - Sacrifice
$AG can be used to burn multiple releases of gold tier assets to create new gold tier cards with the ability to create silver assets if selected.
Please note that players will be given an informative display regarding the probability of receiving X gold cards, given their current number in circulation compared to the maximum mint size.
This will balance the distribution sizes across game levels, especially if a particular high rarity card is left unfinished due to randomization.

Staking and providing liquidity (in progress)

Aradena staking
$AG staking will be open prior to and during the first months of the release of Battlegrounds, as well as at certain intervals after the release based on tokenomic data.
Depending on the duration and amount of $AG wagered, users will receive a predetermined APY.
Please note that users who choose to stake through the Aradena website will receive the additional benefits of owning a warrior.
Liquidity provision
$AG can be used to provide liquidity to decentralized exchanges in exchange for a fee provided by the volume of liquidity pool transactions.
Whereas Aradena will use the existing Web3 infrastructure to make it easier to add liquidity and generate pool revenue.

Nicely thought over use of the token, clear and familiar functionality for Web2 players.

Tokenomics

$AG token

The initial supply of tokens on TGE will be 4.81% of the total supply, to be specific 48,140,825 AG tokens, including:

15 640 825 AG from token sale rounds
25 000 000 AG from liquidity distribution (provides liquidity for exchanges)
1 500 000 AG from staking (enters the staking pool)
6 000 000 АG from treasury (goes to treasury purse)

The market capitalization (market cap) on TGE (excluding liquidity) is $809,929 using the AG public price of $0.035

$AG Rounds

Seed round — $0.01
Private round — $0.025
Public round — $0.035

Vesting schedule table

The game has been in development for 16 months and we have been following them for more than six months.
Everything that has been happening with the project lately is more than satisfying.
Therefore, when a new round of investment was opened, we decided to enter the project.

The company has two types of cooperation with investors: equity (a stake in the Litoja Labs project) and tokens (in the Aradena game).

We get game token and our round is — Private.
Token price — 0.025$.
10% unlock on IDO, then 9 months cliff and then linear unlock during 1 year.

IDO will take place in June 2023 on the Seedify Launchpad.

Acceptable entry conditions: 10% TGE unlock, vesting cliff is not that big and IDO will take place very soon.
Balanced tokenomics where the funds of the team and advisers are locked up for a long time and the public round is quite small.

Social media and marketing

On August 10, 2021, just 3 weeks after the Discord server opened, the genesis collection of 8000 Warriors of Aradena NFTs sold out in just 13 minutes, one of the fastest NFT sales for auto-generated avatars in history. Since then, the community has been actively developing and has reached 60K users.

Main socials are:

👾 Discord https://discord.com/invite/rHQQqATEjV — 21K
Work with the community and inform about updates in the game.

🐦 Twitter https://twitter.com/AradenaWarrior — 37K
They are active on Twitter, regularly report updates and new game mechanics.

Their Twitter is followed by quite a few well-known faces in the crypto industry, followed by all the major investors and even more: Huobi Ventures and Spartan Group are also on the list of interested parties, they may be among the unannounced investors who will join in the same round as us.

👨🏻‍💻 Telegram — https://t.me/Aradena_Official_Community

💻 Medium — https://aradena.medium.com/

💻 Youtube — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPMGTBkk6Pm3-vrJtBfNsSg/featured

This is not an ordinary, high-quality game project that stands out from the general mass of crypto games.
Much attention is paid to the game design and economics.
Powerful investors and partners, a strong team and experienced advisors - a project without weaknesses, which is already in a "low start" and will soon go to storm the top ratings among crypto games.
We definitely recommend replenishing the crypto portfolio with this potentially successful coin.