Ubisoft was one of the first major traditional game publishers to begin playing with blockchain tech years ago, and the creator of Assassin’s Creed and Just Dance has continued to explore the space despite gamer backlash. Now the studio has revealed its next Web3 game.
Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles, quietly revealed late last week, is an original PC game described as a player-versus-player (PvP) tactical role-playing game (RPG) experience.
No screenshots have been released, and the teaser trailer offers only glimpses of the vibe of the fantasy world. It does, however, show what appear to be figurine-like silhouettes of fantasy characters, suggesting a potential aesthetic that draws directly from the aesthetic of physical tabletop games.
“Assemble a team of mythical Champions, engage in thrilling tactical battles against other players, and discover the legends of the dark and mystical world of Grimoria,” an official description reads.
Champions Tactics will be Ubisoft’s first game built on Oasys, a gaming-centric blockchain network that has attracted the interest of other gaming giants like Square Enix, Sega, and Bandai Namco. Last fall, game developer DoubleJump.Tokyo announced that it is building an Oasys game based on Sega’s Japanese Sangokushi Taisen historical card game IP.
The game will be released on PC via a dedicated desktop application—thus not a web-based game—and the official website teases a “free drop at launch” to emable gameplay. That suggests that Champions Tactics may require an NFT or token to play, but that Ubisoft will offer them up for free—at least initially.
Ubisoft caused a stir in the gaming world in late 2021 when it revealed that it would launch limited edition NFT-based items on the Tezos blockchain for the PC version of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
That experimental rollout, to date the highest-profile integration of NFTs into an existing mass-market game, was met by considerable complaints by players. Many gamers are skeptical of NFTs due to factors like speculation on digital assets, scams in the NFT space, and a suspicion that publishers will use NFTs to try and extract more cash from players.
Even so, Ubisoft has continued to forge partnerships and continue building in the Web3 world, including recently releasing its Rabbids characters in The Sandbox, an Ethereum metaverse game.
Back in 2020, Ubisoft released a Rabbids-themed NFT experiment to benefit UNICEF, and then in 2021 launched One Shot League, a spinoff of Ethereum NFT fantasy soccer game Sorare.