Darkbright Studios announced it has closed an oversubscribed $6 million seed round led by BITKRAFT Ventures to build the next generation of accessible and engaging midcore titles starting with Smolbound, a refreshing new take on the life sim RPG genre. Additional investors in the round included Play Ventures, Anthos Capital, King River Capital, Rockaway X, Zentry, Caballeros Capital, Gam3Girl Ventures, and Offchain Labs.
Darkbright is a studio originally incubated by Treasure DAO and founded by game industry veterans. The team hails from companies such as PopCap, ArenaNet, Phoenix Labs, Big Fish Games, and Bain & Co, which have built and scaled titles like Plants vs. Zombies 2, Guild Wars, Party Animals, and Evermerge. With over $3 billion in game revenues from prior titles and no sunset titles, the team is excited to bring new experiences that will delight players for years to come.
The studio’s first title Smolbound is like a combination of Animal Crossing and Raft, with endearing, everchanging environments; interactive characters; and elements of hero collection RPGs, all packaged in an accessible fantasy wrapper. And Smolbound capitalizes on player creativity and adventure with a robust UGC ecosystem and extensive live ops to foster a memorable world of endless experiences.
Player creations shape the world thanks to a seamless web3 integration that makes content ownership accessible and intuitive. The studio is primed to redefine standards in live ops and sim gaming, and has seen strong early traction with 1.8+ million trailer views, 200K+ email signups, and 70K+ Discord users after less than a month since trailer launch.
Darkbright was incubated by Treasure, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that bootstrapped the studio through a proposal to its community. And Treasure – focused on building a decentralized game console for developers and players, provides a neutral base layer for gaming, challenging the traditional walled garden model of publishers. Smolbound’s IP extends from Smol Brains, a CC0-licensed IP created by the community within Treasure, originally distributed as NFTs through a free launch that fostered strong grassroots adoption.
Smolbound will launch on the Treasure Layer-2 blockchain in 2025, and has initiated its closed playtests for 2024.
KEY QUOTES:
“Smolbound addresses a massive and secularly growing audience of gamers seeking comfort over competition via breathing new life into the proven genre of cozy life sims. We have been impressed with the co-founders’ synergistic balance of grounded execution with creative prowess, and are excited to back them in their journey to reinvent the genre.”
- Jonathan Huang, Principal at BITKRAFT Ventures
“We couldn’t be more thrilled for Smolbound to launch as one of the marquee games on Treasure. Smolbound is a next gen take on the life sim genre that marries the best of true asset ownership, player-driven economies, and gameplay enhanced through best-in-class live service. They’ve got a real shot to bring the masses to web3 through gaming.“
- Karel Vuong, Co-Founder of Treasure
