Immutable's Mobile Ethereum RPG 'Guild of Guardians' Releasing in May

Immutable Games announced Tuesday that its long-in-the-works mobile role-playing game Guild of Guardians will finally launch globally on May 15 across Apple’s iOS App Store and Google’s Android Play Store.

Running on Immutable zkEVM, an Ethereum scaling network, the free-to-play crypto quest lets you guide fantasy adventurers through dungeons and battle against powerful bosses as you amass loot. The game has notched over a million pre-registered players in the run-up to release.

In advance of the global launch, Guild of Guardians is introducing an on-chain crafting system called The Altar of Sacrifice on March 25. This allows players to collect and combine NFTs to obtain new rewards. The first “Altar Event” on March 25, called Eri’s Grand Opening, will let players obtain and then “sacrifice” (aka burn, or permanently destroy) special NFTs in exchange for in-game characters.

“These two additions mark the first playable Web3 features in Guild of Guardians and we couldn’t be more excited about the progress we’ve made on the game today,” said Immutable Games Chief Studio Officer Justin Hulog, in a release. “The ability to ‘sacrifice’ Prayer NFTs to mint new Guardian NFTs opens unlimited possibilities and adds a completely new level of strategy and competition to the game.”

Decrypt’s GG went hands-on with a preview build of the game in August 2023 and came away intrigued by the streamlined, mobile-centric fantasy battling experience at play. We wrote that it offered a “healthy mix of randomness and strategy that could make it appealing to RPG fans who can’t grind for hours on their PCs—but can maybe carve out a few minutes on their phones.”

Guild of Guardians has been on the horizon for years now and has previously seen regional soft releases. However, amid behind-the-scenes shifts, it never quite reached the finish line in terms of a full, global release.

Last year, Immutable Games restarted development on Guild of Guardians in collaboration with Mineloader, a veteran support studio that has assisted with the development of major games like The Last of Us Part I, Metroid Prime Remastered, and Resident Evil Village.

“It has been a whirlwind since we rebooted Guild of Guardians with Mineloade,” Immutable Games Vice President and Guild of Guardians game director Chris Clay told Decrypt’s GG. He further cited “challenging decisions” and the “difficult and delicate balance” needed to weigh player feedback with its own ambitious aims.

“At the end of the day, we decided that we needed to focus on the fundamentals to ensure we hit our quality bar at launch—one that we can feel proud about achieving,” he said. “We know that we only have one chance to make a first impression, and we want to give the Guild of Guardians community the game they deserve after patiently waiting these past three years.”

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