Explosions of Web3 games such as Axie Infinity and StepN have demonstrated the potential of blockchain games, but the X-to-earn slogan has made games tasteless - fun is no longer important as everything is about money-making.

According to Nicky Jin, former director of Ourgame - a company with total revenue of 125 million USD - the ultimate goal of playing a game is to have fun. As pointed out in the book The Art of Game Design, game designers need to "create a great, attractive, and unforgettable experience for players". 

Hence, MatchNova was born!

MatchNova is the first Match3 puzzle game developed and published by gaming studio SuperNova Lab Limited. Led by Nicky Jin, former director of Ourgame, the team consists of ex-employees from tech giants Microsoft and Google. CMO Raymond Wu has over a decade of experience working with online poker giant PokerStars and co-founded one of the most successful NFT projects in Asia, FOMO Dog Club. The vision will be “building a genuinely fun blockchain game to seamlessly bridge Web2 users to Web3” 

In September 2022, the project commenced and successfully raised 1 million USD in seed round funding, with Aipollo Investment as the lead investor and LinkVC and Ace Direct International as participating investors.

After only six months of development, the team built a working product and had a very successful Closed Alpha Test in February 2023. Although that may seem like a short amount of time to make a game, the team’s extensive experience played a key role in the expedited process. 

On March 23rd, BNB Chain's official account retweeted MatchNova's post regarding the Beta announcement, expressing its positive outlook towards MatchNova and the blockchain gaming industry.

Guiding Web2 Players into Web3 

In 2022, the Asia-Pacific region alone had 1.75 billion traditional gaming users versus 5 million Web3 gaming users globally. Looking at the massive contrast, technology-oriented, fully on-chain games are becoming a niche carnival at the expense of mass adoption.

In Web3 games, players must use an encrypted wallet, such as MetaMask, to sign up, which is a complicated task. Then purchase gas tokens such as Ether or BNB just to make transactions. MatchNova sees this process as a major roadblock to mass adoption.

MatchNova team has eliminated these barriers and created a “one-click” experience:

The process is simple:

• Users create a free account using e-mail, Google ID, or Apple ID
• NFT trading system is built in-app, players will not even feel they are using a different technology

Simple to Play with Tactical Depth

MatchNova is a casual game that anyone can easily enjoy playing anywhere, anytime, delivering "Instant Fun."

Despite being so simple, MatchNova offers a plethora of gameplay functions that create a multi-dimensional and variable strategy. Whether you're playing casually for a few minutes or studying the game seriously, MatchNova has got you covered.

MatchNova further takes gameplay to a new level of addiction with its built-in PVP real-time battle mode. Players are pitted against their opponents on the same map, and every move they make impacts not only their own score but also their opponent's performance.

Beta Test Coming Soon

In February 2023, MatchNova launched its Alpha version. Within a week, 500 testers successfully leveled up their characters to the highest level, fought exciting battles, and shared a prize pool of $10,000.

Beta Test will start on April 10 and is only open to Whitelist holders. The distribution of Whitelist is ongoing via Twitter and Discord. Upon completion of Beta Test, MatchNova will initiate the official launch of Genesis NFT sale, limited to 10,000 units. Whitelist holders will get early access.

‍