Wild Forest Research Report
Context
Gaming as a sector within web3 has grown significantly since its inception with play-to-earn, with more games and gaming protocols struggling to achieve product-market fit. Existing games within web3 struggled to design and provide core gameplay mechanics that could compete with web2 incumbents, and as such many gaming protocols have failed to acquire and retain users within their respective genres. However, gaming within web3 is moving within the right direction, with an improved emphasis on core fun gameplay mechanics, improved in-game unit economics, as well as reducing barriers to entry for users through abstracting away key pain points such as pre-requisite knowledge around web3 and digital wallets. Gaming as a sector is at the forefront of being able to onboard the next wave of users into web3, and as such is a sector in which other protocols, blockchains, and infrastructure are continuing to build towards in order for web3 games to be able to succeed. For example, we see large chains such as Arbitrum recently announcing the introduction of their $215 million Gaming Catalyst Programme (GCP) to foster gaming growth, Mantle’s $200m EcoFund deploying $5m for GameFi alone, as well as infrastructure such as Aethir pushing cloud gaming in order for web3 games to acquire users who face hardware restrictions. It is clear to see web 3 gaming as a sector is now receiving necessary catalysts for continuous future growth. Introducing Wild Forest, a web3 strategy game built on the Ronin Chain.
Project Overview
Wild Forest is a web3 free-to-play single-screen real-time strategy (RTS) game on the Ronin blockchain that pits players against each other in fast-paced, skill-based PvP battles. Players capture territories, build structures, and deploy armies to destroy their opponent's main base. Utilizing up to seven unique cards from their custom deck, players can leverage varying unit types, stats, and abilities to create dynamic strategies. The game's card metagame introduces extensive strategic depth, fostering unpredictable gameplay scenarios while prioritizing fairness and minimizing pay-to-win and bot-driven exploits.
Wild Forest is backed by Sky Mavis, Animoca Brands, OKX Ventures, Spartan Group, and Kahuna, with the strategic round led by L1D.
Key Highlights
▪️ 305k RON (~$1M): NFT Sale sold out in 7 seconds.
▪️ 3M $RON (~$6.3M): NFT trading volume—highest all-time volume on Mavis Market.
▪️ 500k+ installs, 179k+ DAW, 189k+ MAW, and 4.5M transactions.
▪️ 76.6k Discord members | 90.2k Twitter followers.
🎮 Easy to Start: Learn the game and start playing in just 5 minutes.
🖥 Cross-Platform: The game is fully launched and available on Android, iOS, PC, and Mac.
Traction
Roadmap for Q4 2024
- Fair Play Rules Update
- Lord Staking System Update
- $WF Withdraw
- Leaderboard Rework
- Unit rank and Levels Extension
- Unit Mint Fee
- Gameplay Expeditions
- Castle Renting
- Token Share Program
- Perk Re-rolls
Market Overview and Competitive Advantage
Tokenomics
Token Utilities for $WF Include:
- Unit rank-up fee for player progression
- Premium in-game purchases
- NFT mint fee
- Token Share Program benefits
- Tiered referral earnings
- Future Expedition Gameplay
In addition, all $WF Fees earned from in-game transactions are re-distributed to ensure positive growth within the ecosystem:
- 15% to Token Share Program (Shared between referral rewards to onboard new players and token stakers)
- 25% to Ecosystem Treasury
- 60% to the Wild Forest DAO Treasury
Investment Thesis
Current games within web3 often face key challenges for product-market fit and general adoption in the form of: Lack of high quality UX and fun gameplay, high barriers to entry (monetary costs, prerequisite knowledge of web3), and poor in-game unit economic design. Wild Forest is able to address these challenges to find PMF by designing a core-game loop that requires no initial monetary capital to start, as well as abstracting away all web3 related components within the game itself. This has allowed Wild Forest to ensure an environment where any newly onboarded players encounter 0 friction within player onboarding. For example, in-game assets are off-chain by default and don't require minting as NFTs for use. Players have the choice to mint their assets, granting them full custody and the ability to trade if desired. This allows Wild Forest to tap into a larger total addressable market of gamers within both web2 and web3, and is therefore not silo-ed into an addressable market of users requiring a web3 wallet.
Wild Forest’s core game loop and gameplay mechanics has proved to be able to attract gamers that are interested within this genre of gaming within their initial open beta, attracting over 104,000 total players, with over 61,000 MAUs and 18,000 DAUs. The ability to tap into both web2 and web3 gamers is also shown, with 61% of players within the initial open beta connecting their wallets. The Open beta has also shown to be able to retain players that have been onboarded, with a retention rate of gamers being over 47% after Day 1.
In addition, with Wild Forest being built on the Ronin blockchain and being backed by Sky Mavis, Wild Forest is able to tap into Ronin’s established ecosystem of both users and other gaming protocols.
There is an obvious positive flywheel for games being built on-top of Ronin’s ecosystem, with games being able to tap into users on Ronin to grow their own user-base, as seen within previous success cases such as PIXELs.
Team
The core team behind Wild Forest is Zillion Whales, a gaming studio with over 36 team members pushing out strategy games for PC, Mobile and Consoles for over a decade. Past portfolio games include Mushroom Wars, achieving a player base of over 15 million users, and generating over $20m in total revenue. Games released by Zillion Whales have won Multiple awards including AppStore Best Game 2016 & 2017, Indie Prize Best Multiplayer Game, and DevGamm Best Mobile Game.
Andy Korotkov CEO, co-founder
- 13+ years in Game Dev, producer, and engineer
- Founded 3 game companies
- Worked on World of Warships in Wargaming
Alex Silaev CTO, co-founder
- 11+ years in Game Dev, Unity developer
- Participated in big titles like Blitzkrieg 3, Universim, and The Uncertain
- As CTO released 3 products under Zillion Whales
Lev Silaev Lead Game Designer, co-founder
- 11+ years in Game Dev
- Lead designer of award-winning Mushroom Wars 2 and other games
Vitaliy Kolomeets Art director, co-founder
- 9+ years in Game Dev
- Created Mushroom Wars 2 Aesthetics
Key Risks
With gaming within web3 in general, there is significant risk in-terms of how games are able to find product-market fit and a competitive advantage against both web2 and web3 competitors. However, Wild Forest is able to mitigate these risks as there is clear demand for strategy games within both web2 and web3, and this is already shown through Wild Forest’s Open Beta user statistics for both user acquisition and retention.
About Wild Forest
Wild Forest is a web3 free-to-play real-time strategy game featuring fast-paced PvP battles and a token-driven economy, powered by Ronin.
Backed by Sky Mavis, Animoca Brands, OKX Ventures, Spartan Group, and Kahuna, with the strategic round led by L1D.
Website | Twitter | Discord | Blog
About Impossible Finance
Impossible is an on-chain native, research advisory firm with a DeFi launchpad and accelerator. We help projects kickstart, fundraise, scale and launch their tokens while enabling users to learn, discover and invest in high quality crypto opportunities.
