Serum City, a city-building game that utilizes NFT assets from Yuga Labs’ Mutant Ape Yacht Club and other collections, is now available to play. However, you’ll need an access pass, and only certain NFT project holders can claim one for now.

Novel Labs and Faraway have launched the game, which was first revealed last April, with the first season of gameplay available to Serum City NFT pass holders.

People who own NFTs from the Mutant Hounds, Mutant Cartel Oath, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and Mutant Ape Yacht Club collections can now claim and mint an access pass. The mint is free, though users will have to pay normal Ethereum network gas fees, as usual.

The developers previously told Decrypt’s GG that they plan to open up access over time with each new season of in-game content, gradually adding more eligible players. The aforementioned projects span approximately 39,000 individual NFTs that are currently eligible to claim passes.

Serum City is built around Ethereum NFTs and uses ApeCoin as its in-game currency. The game spotlights Mutant Ape characters, but is not developed by Bored Ape and Mutant Ape creator Yuga Labs. Rather, it’s an independent project that utilizes the decentralized commercial rights offered to owners of Yuga’s Ape NFT projects.

However, while it’s not an official Yuga project, co-developer Faraway is now working closely with Yuga Labs on its own game projects.

 NFT Revolution

Mutant Apes Take the Lead in Serum City, an ApeCoin-Powered Ethereum NFT Game

Compared to Yuga Labs’ primary Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, the grimier, sometimes psychedelic siblings in the later and larger Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) set aren’t considered nearly as valuable or prominent—and their lower floor price has mirrored that sentiment. But Novel Labs and Mutant Cartel founder Lior Messika—who’s also a Mutant Ape collector himself and a Yuga Labs investor through his VC firm Eden Block—is leaning into that feeling of being an outcast among outcasts and turning it int...

That includes an upcoming free-to-play version of Yuga’s Dookey Dash game that was revealed last month, along with an Otherside-themed mobile game that was teased by Yuga this week with few details. Dookey Dash: Unclogged is set to launch this quarter, while the latter game will apparently roll out in the second half of the year.