Ethereum NFT Card Battler ‘Parallel’ Launches on Epic Games Store

Parallel, an NFT-driven competitive card game built on Ethereum, launched Wednesday on the Epic Games Store, potentially reaching a far larger audience in the process.

The Epic Games Store is a prominent PC gaming marketplace, and had 270 million users as of the end of 2023, including some 75 million monthly active users. Epic Games is the creator of free-to-play shooter hit Fortnite and has acquired other games like Rocket League, but the store hosts games from a wide array of studios.

Parallel, which was GG’s pick for the 2023 game of the year, expanded access earlier this year with the launch of an open beta version of the game, following the previous closed beta.

The competitive trading card game is built around NFTs minted on Ethereum and layer-2 scaling network Base, although it also features non-tokenized in-game cards. Players who download the free-to-play game on the Epic Games Store can unlock five additional “Apparition Packs” with the non-NFT cards.

Along with opening up more avenues to play the game, including a planned mobile version of the game at some point, Parallel Studios—which raised $35 million in March, and recently launched Parallel’s Planetfall expansion—is also embracing esports with over $500,000 worth of prizes planned for the first year of Parallel League competition.

But there are bigger plans beyond, teased Head of Partnerships Franklin Fitch.

“Parallel going live on Epic opens us up to millions more players worldwide,” said Fitch in a release. “But we don't plan to stop there. As we roll out more ways to access and play Parallel, we also plan to scale our competitive prize pool into millions of dollars next year.”

Beyond Parallel, the firm is also developing Colony, an upcoming generative AI-driven simulation game built on Solana.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.