Video game studio Bazooka Tango will launch a limited 10-day playtest of its upcoming NFT card-based strategy game Shardbound beginning February 21, the firm announced Wednesday.

The Australia-based studio said 2,000 players will get "exclusive, hands-on access" on a first-come, first-served basis to the game's latest iteration, called "Ascent to the Shards." Signups will take place via the Shardbound website.

Bazooka Tango co-founder Bo Daly said in the release that feedback from earlier playtests last year allowed the team to "incorporate valuable feedback into the next iteration of the game."

“We can’t wait to show the next major step in our development process, including new gameplay content, a new game UI, updated card distribution systems, additional 2D card art, testing card progression, and more,” Daly said.

 NFT Revolution

Indie Card-Battler Shardbound Revived as Web3 Game on Immutable zkEVM

The crypto world is waiting for high-quality, breakout games to showcase the benefits of blockchain. Could the answer be to take an almost-there Web2 game and give it a Web3 twist? That’s what Immutable Games is trying. Today, the game publisher and company behind Ethereum scaling network Immutable X announced that it’s working with game studio Bazooka Tango to adapt the 2017 turn-based tactical collectible card game Shardbound into a blockchain game. Shardbound players must use virtual cards to...

Shardbound is being built on Immutable zkEVM, an Ethereum scaling network that recently launched in early access for select developers. Immutable zkEVM will open broadly to all developers in the future, with Immutable targeting that step to happen sometime this year.

Bazooka Tango is developing the game in collaboration with Immutable Games. Shardbound was initially released in early access as a traditional PC game in 2017 by indie studio Spiritwalk Games. However, the game was never fully finished and saw limited interest from players.

Last March, Immutable and Bazooka Tango said that they were working on overhauling and expanding the original game to implement blockchain elements.

Editor’s note: This article was written with the assistance of AI. Edited and fact-checked by Andrew Hayward.