The contract has been established through The Sandbox Game Makers Fund, with Primordial one of the first studios joining the innovative programme awarding grants to help game makers create, share and monetize voxel games.

The Sandbox, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, is building a unique virtual world where players can build, own, and monetize their gaming experiences using NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and $SAND, the main utility token of the platform, based on the Ethereum Blockchain.

To date, The Sandbox has signed more than 140 partners, including Square Enix, ATARI, Beast Quest, Gemini, deadmau5, and many more.

Vaughan Holloway, founder of Primordial Games, said: “We are really excited to be one of the first studios involved with this ground-breaking initiative from The Sandbox. Their vision is to curate a deeply immersive metaverse in which virtual worlds and games will be created collaboratively and without central authority.”

Founded in early 2020, Primordial has staff members in Dundee, Scotland and in Oakland, CA, and are preparing to welcome two more team members in the coming months. Specialising in history-themed games, puzzle, platforming and narrative genres the game is expected to be a social platforming adventure scheduled to be released later this year with additional content released monthly until early 2023.

Vaughan Holloway added: “Collectively, the Primordial team is extremely strong, bringing together exceptional design, art and audio expertise. Creating a game for such a far-reaching platform will really allow us to flex both our creative and technical talent with what we expect to be impressive results.”

Sébastien Borget, COO and co-founder, The Sandbox, commented: “The Game Makers Fund is a way of creating opportunities for anyone to make their own games using thousands of voxel assets, without the need of knowing how to code games.The Sandbox’s game development tool “Game Maker” is free to download and doesn’t require any coding knowledge. Anyone using it can then monetize the content with our cryptocurrency, $SAND. The overall goal for the fund is to generate in excess of 100 games which we hope will foster a community where creators, players and brands can build and grow alongside each other.

“We are thrilled to partner with Primordial and to see what and how their game will deliver for both the platform and the players.”

In addition to The Sandbox project, Primordial is also developing ‘The Silent Tombs’ for the PC. The historic tomb exploration game, exploring, highlighting and promoting Ancient Celtic, Gaelic and Anglo Saxon culture across the British Isles, will be released in late 2022.