In the futuristic world of Dark Machine, colossal mechs battle in a destructive third-person shooting game that promises to write the next chapter in a category that has been an inspiring cultural force across gaming, anime, manga, and movies over the last few decades.
We recently sat down with Meta-X, the development team behind Dark Machine to candidly explore why they’re choosing to build on Immutable zkEVM, their inspirations, the technical challenges they faced before building with Immutable, and their 10 year vision.
What is Dark Machine?
Dark Machine thrusts players into a battlefield where giant mechs combine and grow, using creative destruction to overwhelm opponents. The key to victory lies in the efficient enlargement of mechs, allowing players to wreak havoc in the arena.
Meta-X is formed by veterans from companies like SquareEnix, Capcom, and Sega. The impressive roster spear-headed by Takashi Murakoshi, the former M&A leader for SegaSammy includes renowned names like Goro Taniguchi, the Creative Producer known for ‘One Piece Film: Red’ and ‘Code-Geass,’ and Hidetaka Tenjin, the Chief Mech Designer famed for ‘Gundam’ and ‘Macross.’
Learn more about Dark Machine in our Immutable zkEVM Partner Spotlight here.
Why did you choose to build with Immutable?
The Immutable platform in combination with the Immutable zkEVM chain provides a great technology base for us to reach the scale, security, performance, and speed needed for competitive gaming. Additionally, lowering the barrier to entry for all gamers is critical to grow our user base and platforms such as Immutable Passport allows easy on-boarding which is great.
We believe that Immutable zkEVM will set the gold-standard where performance is critical for a great competitive gaming experience. Immutable zkEVM and Passport are great game-centric technologies that we believe will drive further adoption of blockchain games by all gamers.
Can you provide an example of a game you consider well-designed, and explain why?
Whenever a game has a game design that is so tightly in-sync with the world design that it is accenting and augmenting the entire experience, we would consider that a well-designed game. Games like Legend of Zelda, FF16, Elden Ring, Uncharted, all do this. Additionally, non-redundant mechanics where it is clear to the player what they need to accomplish to clear set goals, is important as well.
What is your roadmap and what can our gamers be excited for?
We are looking to release Dark Machine in late 2025. This will not only be a web3 game release but a simultaneous global anime release as well. We will preload this with a 1-1.5 year beta program which will provide many opportunities to experience the game in advance but also receive airdrops and other early access rewards.
Can you discuss any notable achievements or successes from you or your team's previous game
Our team has created and contributed to hundreds of games at this point - we are also the creators of Elite Beat Agents, Lips, and Evangelion Battlefields. We also received many awards and scored an 87 metacritic score for Elite Beat Agents.
What are some of the most challenging technical problems you have encountered in game development, and how did you solve them?
Whenever you are doing something you don’t have experience in, it’s always a challenge to implement it. Particularly for us, this has been exploring new advanced gameplay systems, advanced shaders, large scale AAA productions, etc.
What are your thoughts on the importance of storytelling in games, and how do you integrate it into your game?
Whether your game is a story-based game or not, we believe it is always important to have a story to tell and environmental storytelling is also very important in the day of ultra fidelity graphics. Stories are told through not only text and voice acting, but through the gameplay, environment, and audio as well.
How do you see your game and genre transforming in the next 10 years?
We believe that in 10 years, all of competitive gaming will shift to web3 economies. Our platform is designed to accelerate this shift and we believe this will democratize the competitive gaming genre for all mainstream gamers.
The Meta-X mantra is ‘Give More Players, More Rewards, More of the Time’. We believe strongly that web3 competitive gaming can become much broader than the current competitive gaming landscape by the democratization of tournaments and competitive gameplay. Meta-X is set to pioneer the democratization of competitive gaming via decentralization a la web3.
What is something you want players to know about your game?
We believe that our unique blend of AAA mech-based gameplay coupled with creative mass destruction via enlargement of mechs and DAO-style daily tournaments will transform the way we think about blockchain games and the competitive games genre. Look out for both the game and anime in 2024 and 2025!
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