BELLEVUE, WASH. – June 1st, 2016 – Soulbound Studios, whose upcoming game Chronicles of Elyria sits at over one million dollars on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, with two days remaining in the campaign, has partnered with technology startup Improbable. Improbable’s SpatialOS platform will enable the massively multiplayer online role-playing game’s unique persistent world in which player characters grow old, die, and can be reincarnated.
SpatialOS is a distributed operating system that enables developers to create simulations inhabited by millions of complex entities, and allows game worlds and other simulated environments to run seamlessly on thousands of servers in the cloud. In order to create the dynamic and immersive MMORPG experience in Chronicles of Elyria, Soulbound Studios will be building their Soulborn Engine and the rest of the Chronicles of Elyria back-end on the foundation of SpatialOS. With support for load balancing, recovery, replication, and cross-process communication, SpatialOS provides the core fabric and infrastructure required for Chronicles of Elyria.
“People have been asking us how we plan to get a hundred thousand players spread across the largest geographic area in a video game to date. This is it! With the help of SpatialOS, we can do it faster than most people think possible, and with a smaller team,” said Jeromy Walsh, Owner and CEO of Soulbound Studios. “We’ve been talking with the folks at Improbable for nearly six months now, evaluating the platform, speaking with their CEO and team, and experiencing first-hand how committed Improbable are to helping make Chronicles of Elyria a success.” Jeromy Walsh added, “We hope our work on Chronicles of Elyria may someday benefit other game developers as well.”
Instead of using the time and resources normally allocated for creating core server features, Soulbound Studios, relying on SpatialOS, can instead focus on bringing players the innovative gameplay mechanics that won Chronicles of Elyria the “Best Indie MMO” Award from MMO Games when it debuted at PAX East. These mechanics include aging & dying, souls and reincarnation, offline player-characters, dynamic, non-repeatable quests, player-created contracts, player-run governments, and most importantly, a dynamic, event-driven story engine. Using SpatialOS to underpin the game’s engine will allow many more players to interact in a persistent, developing world where choices can have lasting consequences.
“I’ve been lucky enough to work on some truly visionary projects, from Bungie’s Halo Franchise to Microsoft’s Hololens,” said Art Director Eddie Smith. “SpatialOS is the perfect platform for us to build our vision of a new kind of MMO.”
Improbable, founded in 2012, is regularly identified as one of the most exciting startups in Britain. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz – one of the only European startups to be funded at the Series A stage by the legendary Silicon Valley investor – Improbable has recruited more than 90 staff from 22 countries to create a new paradigm for online world building.
“Improbable was founded to make the kind of game we wanted to play but could not find,” said Herman Narula, founder and CEO at Improbable. “Then we realized we want to enable many experiences that break the boundaries of traditional game technology so we built a platform for developers. Chronicles of Elyria’s has the potential to innovate and entertain players in new ways and we are excited that SpatialOS can help a team like Soulbound focus on bringing its game to life.”
