Forgotten Runiverse Open Beta Billed as ‘Coming Out Party’ for Ethereum Franchise

Ronin-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Forgotten Runiverse is entering open beta on Monday, with the move positioned as a significant step forward in the franchise’s quest to become a household name.

“I see this open beta as our first real coming out party,” Bearsnake, pseudonymous co-founder and COO of Forgotten Runes—the broader universe which Forgotten Runiverse falls under—told Decrypt’s GG. “The biggest swing for the IP to date is this open beta. It’s going to be the thing that we really hang our hat on.”

Snake acknowledges that Forgotten Runes already has a globally distributed comic book series, with some issues of the series even including in-game item codes, and it’s derived from the original Ethereum NFT collection from 2021. While he framed these as successful efforts, the size of the global gaming community offers a larger upside for the franchise to really get its name out there.

“Our goal is much loftier than [being a Web3 brand], and that is to become a global franchise,” Bearsnake explained. “The fastest way to become a global franchise is to have these large media expressions.”

“This is a 100-year IP,” he added. “In 100 years, I want my grandkids helping run Forgotten Runes.”

Forgotten Runes also has an animated TV series in development with the creator of John Wick, Derek Kolstad, but Bearsnake still views the game as the franchise’s most important medium.

Entering open beta via Ronin, the Ethereum sidechain gaming network, Forgotten Runiverse is a free-to-play pixel art MMORPG based on the growing lore of the Forgotten Runes universe. Players will join forces in guilds to battle through player-vs-player (PvP) and player-vs-environment (PvE) adventures, collecting and crafting items that can be turned into NFTs.

The game already held a closed beta, where players logged over eight hours on average over the two-day testing span, and some 76% of players were new to the franchise.

Still, Bearsnake believes the new features shipping with this update will push the game to the next level. This includes enabling players to customize the interior of their homes, certain guilds being granted custom flags, and the addition of dungeons—one immediately available on Monday, with a second coming the week after.

“This is another opportunity to either go solo or with your friends to go grind dungeons, where the lore of the world even just becomes more and more rich,” Bearsnake explained. “I think the richness and depth of the mechanics and the map and the world combine to make a pretty fun experience.”

The rollout of the open beta test—called “New Foundations”—comes just days after the launch of a reward points system called… Donuts.

“Ultimately, what Donuts are going to be is a very, very comprehensive reward system for the entire Forgotten Runes ecosystem,” Bearsnake told Decrypt. “I see them as this throughline [for] everything that we’re building.”

By going to the game’s website, you can start earning Donuts by connecting your Discord account, following Twitter accounts, and more. But starting Monday, you’ll be able to earn and stack Donuts by playing the game and completing quests.

Why Donuts? It’s a callback to 2021 when someone in the project’s Discord asked how they could get on the allowlist to mint the Wizards Cult NFT. Fellow co-founder Elf J Trul replied, “Sacrifice your soul to the jelly donut!”

Since then, it’s become an inside joke of sorts for the community, and has since expanded into the Forgotten Runes universe itself. There are currently 33 different types of Donut you can earn, all with different ways to be collected.

What will Donuts lead to? Points systems often precede token airdrops in the crypto industry, but Bearsnake wouldn’t spill the beans just yet.

“We can’t quite talk about that right now,” he said with a wry smile. “But it will be rolling out before the end of the year, probably a couple months from now.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward