In the latest episode of the Blockchain Gaming World podcast, editor-in-chief Jon Jordan talks to Foonie Magus CEO Frank Cheng about the inspirations behind deck-building dungeon battle RTS Apeiron, which is currently available via Epic Games Store.
The game is expected to go live via mobile app stores before the end of 2024, while its meta-level god gameplay is due to be added in 2025.
BlockchainGamer: Can you tell us a bit about your career so far?
Frank Chen: I founded this company eight years ago. Before that I was a management consultant and a private equity investor, but I’ve loved games throughout my life and it’s been a childhood dream to create my own game. So after many, many years I decided to pursue my dream. It’s been quite a bumpy journey, I’ve found out that game development is actually a lot tougher than playing the game.
Apeiron was the dream game I wanted to create. After gathering a lot of experience and prototyping, it finally went to production and became a blockchain game three years ago. Nowadays it’s actually more than a blockchain game, it’s a full IP franchise that involves merchandise, animations, and a plushie collection. It’s been a wild journey.
Witnessing the potential that Axie Infinity and CryptoKitties had changed what I believed to be a perfect mobile game into a fully fledged blockchain game. The first six years flew by, but I have learned even more in the three short years I’ve been into blockchain.
Foonie Magus is the developer behind the game. Does the name have a meaning, or is it just a random name?
The core development team in Hong Kong is called Aither Entertainment, but Foonie Magus is our publishing entity in Singapore. The name comes from Foonie, which is my son’s nickname, and Magus is one of my favorite characters from Square Enix’s Chrono Trigger, one of the best RPGs in the world.
How would you explain Apeiron as a concept? It has hybrid game synergies and a lot going on, so how did that vision come about?
The genre I would call it nowadays would be a hybrid RTS because the core gameplay is a combination of two unique real-time strategy games. One is a god game simulation, while the other is like a card-based battle. So, I wanted to try something new, to find a gameplay element that I sorely miss, and that’s the card game simulation.
Many developers and of course, my co-founders, are the ones with actual development experience who come up with many other parts of the games and elements. Battle being one of those because for mobile, monetization, PvP, marketability are definitely needed. The card-based elements also came quite late. After witnessing Axie Infinity.
If we can utilize NFTs and onchain elements, card collection is very powerful and shares a lot of synergy with what game business and collectible models are like.
Then you also have this god game element. How does that come into play?
The whole theme of Apeiron is that you play God, in a universe of gods and dudes. Dudes are these yellow, chubby creatures. I wanted to recreate something like Black & White and Spore.
It’s a story in the game, you’re a god, you have your own planets. Your planets are populated by the dudes, and it’s your job to take care of them. How you manage your planets, how you answer their prayers will translate to different types of buildings that they build for you and even good and evil elements such as heaven or hell will be implemented. All these are translated into stats that you have in battle.
Currently you’ve got a PC version which is the dungeon battle gameplay. The god element still isn’t playable. Is that correct?
Yep. Right now, Apeiron consists of three main gameplay elements. There’s the god game simulation, which is the planet simulation. The other two are the roguelike dungeon and the PvP arena, which make the battle side of the equation.
In the current PC version, you can play the dungeon, PvP arena, and the story mode, but the god game sim will come after the mobile release. We created the battle version first because the whole token economy revolves around the PVP arena and daily leaderboards.
Do you think Apeiron’s different game elements will appeal to different sorts of behaviour?
Ultimately, an app around different types of gameplay elements generate different types of resources that’s tradable. So in a guild of players, if you want to focus on the simulation and just build a planet, you can get that and trade that with other players who dedicate themselves to the PvP arena but don’t want to spend too much time in the dungeon or in the card game. I think that’s how we get different groups of players.
The card game simulation is a unique proposition of gameplay and graphics, which will attract a lot of users. Ultimately, in terms of longevity and sustainability, what attracts users in the first place versus what really sustains the economy and keeps the marketability going will be rather different.
It was a tough decision, but my team told me we had to do the battle gameplay first instead of the card game. And I believe they are right, otherwise it would just be a simulation game that keeps grinding NFTs and tokens without much need to really compete and burn stuff.
For building an audience, the battle side is the more immediately appealing element for players. How have you found having that demo live?
Indeed. It first came out as a dungeon mode with basic run features and then we incorporated multiple bosses, a roguelike structure to it. Then earlier this year we launched the PvP arena, which is when it really started picking up, especially coupled with our migration to Ronin.
That attracted a lot of competitive players from Axie Infinity, who have contributed a lot in terms of balancing blockchain features and reward structures. Now that we have combined the dungeon, the PvP, and the story elements, we’re just a stone’s throw away from launching a much more complete version of the mobile game. That’s coming in a few months.
We will also have features like the battle pass and the shop, which will help players journey their way into the Apeiron game.
Originally you were running on Polygon. You mentioned Axie Infinity as something that was inspirational for the project, so was it an obvious decision to move to Ronin?
Indeed migrating to another chain, even if it’s EVM to EVM, often takes several months of efforts and a new auditing. But the way we view chains is sort of like a publisher on a console.
We were looking for a more game-focused chain. Initially, Polygon was a game-focused chain as well, but I think they gradually grew in size and started diverting resources, so they couldn’t spend too much time with individual projects.
Naturally, it came down to Ronin and Immutable, both really good gaming chains. We chose Ronin for many reasons. One is that we play a lot of Axie Infinity ourselves, so we’re familiar with the Ronin wallet. They have a good mobile wallet, especially for gamers and with their experience, their crowd, and the way our game is structured, it’s easy to find a similar audience there even in bad times.
The decision was finalised after meeting Ronin’s management team. They’re very picky and I like that. A lot of investors typically just look at valuations and then decide without really looking into the game, the viability, the marketability. But they did their due diligence. They looked into every aspect of the game and its potential before making that decision.
At the moment it seems Ronin is the one chain where you can launch a game and get around a hundred thousand daily wallets. It’s not like you get that for free, but the choice of chain seems to matter.
Indeed. Well, the Ronin crowd is large and noisy. But at the same time, they are also veterans in the space, they know what’s up, they’ve survived the waves.
But to be honest, in web3, there’s a lot of grinders, even multi-accounts. I don’t think that’s just Ronin. Everywhere there’s a lot of bloated numbers. But as you can see in terms of retention and gameplay numbers, Ronin has a strong and sizeable crowd compared to most.
Your demo is live on Epic Game Store, and you’re looking to get the mobile game out before the end of the year. Do you see that as a big lever for growth?
Getting on Google Play and Apple App Store is the most important thing a browser game can do in order to reach the mainstream audience. Getting on all the platforms first, at least abiding by the rules of making sure that we can be published and be accessible is extremely important. Once we have that, it comes down to a lot of marketing.
Having experienced two years of up and down in the blockchain and gaming industry, I think there’s two things we can do. We can conserve all our capital for a bull market. But one of the main problems of crypto is that for the past two years at least, there’s really not that many new retail gamers or users. Trying to fight for the attention or the revenue from this group, at least from Apeiron’s perspective, is not really worth it. There will always be more casual and hyper casual games coming out with airdrops.
Apeiron, being a micro game with much longer development and iterative cycles, should not be competing for the next hype and airdrop. We should focus on mainstream gamers and a mobile launch is definitely one of the biggest opportunities we will focus on.
After that, we have our god game launch, but that’s more on the Steam side of things.
So far there hasn’t really been much interest from general game publishers in publishing web3 games. What’s your view on that?
Yes, there’s yet to be a really successful game out there, even with big publishers, but I think it’s only a matter of time before they get more involved. But at the same time, publishing blockchain games is rather controversial. They would like to test it in small bytes and digestible versions.
Well, I don’t see web3 as a very strong marketability in terms of mainstream audience. It adds a different layer of gameplay and revenue source. But going with the same gameplay mechanics in a different wrapper by saying there’s blockchain elements, should not, and will not, be enough to gain a lot of users.
We’ve put a lot of effort into improving and innovating new types of gameplay, artwork, the story, and features to attract users in traditional gaming. The blockchain element is there. It’s not needed for players to play, but if they want to, they will discover better ways to pay for in-game currencies, and other ways to engage with the game.
You mentioned the rules of the app stores. Apart from with Steam, on the PC side you can do whatever you want, within certain constraints, I guess…?
Not really. In terms of these large distribution platforms, the one rule is that the game that’s downloaded cannot drop NFTs or tokens directly.
The actual minting and claiming token rewards must be off Google Store or Steam or a web store. But these policies change all the time and hopefully we can steer clear of everything and remain there.
What do you think about the Apeiron IP and the opportunities it provides?
From an Asian perspective, developing an IP typically revolves around ACG – animation, cartoons, comics and games.
Hong Kong developers are very much like Japanese developers, they really like animation, so that’s something we’ll work on. In terms of the IP franchise, I think it works well with blockchain, because having a recognizable brand and digital ownership fit well together.
Alos, we’re not tied to just a single game. We can develop other mobile games, which is actually one of our plans down the line. We’ll do a mini game with shorter iteration cycles when there is a good hype running.
In terms of acquiring users, the main thing we want to do is animation. That’s where you can reach more audiences and bring them into multiple parts of the game.
Find out more about Apeiron via its website or get playing the PC version on Epic Games Store.
