Silicon Valley online game publisher Narvalous has raised $2.3 million in angel funding, and it has launched its Western open beta for the online game Chrono Wars: Light of Darkness.
The angel funding will help Palo Alto, Calif.-based Narvalous launch its action-oriented massively multiplayer online (MMO) fantasy game.
In the game (developed by FancyBeans and published by Narvalous), players travel through 2,000 years to mend the fabric of time and save civilization. It runs on FancyBeans’ proprietary Fancy3D Engine, which enables users to play the client-quality game as easily as they would a browser game, Narvalous said.
The investors include Ping Wu (Summitview Capital), Larry Li (ZPark Venture), and Huican Zhu (Z-Park Venture). Narvalous aims to become a global business, helping overseas developers publish their games in the U.S. and American developers take their games abroad.
Eventually, the company will make its game platform, xGamePortal, a central home for players to find cool new games, socialize with other gamers, and play with friends across different devices and screens.
The team’s members previously worked on titles like vCruise, Wartune, and League of Angels.
“My experience in the game industry has allowed me to understand the secret formula for publishing a successful game that is also financially successful,” said Toni Xu, the CEO of Narvalous, in a statement. “The games market is becoming globalized. It’s great to be in a position where we have the talent and experience to capitalize on such a unique opportunity.”
Chrono Wars: Light of Darkness is a free-to-play game that runs on a PC on all major browsers, and it will launch on the Mac OS soon.
“With Chrono Wars, Narvalous is proud to bring to our avid gamers IMAX-quality 3D graphics and an unprecedented client gameplay experience via a browser interface or a PC launcher,” says Jay Tang, the president of Narvalous, in a statement. “We worked with the developer, FancyBeans, and the global publisher, Gamewave, in four intensive months to adapt the game for the North American market.”
Narvalous was founded in 2010. Chrono Wars originally launched in China in May 2014, and it has 5 million players and generates an average of $15 million in monthly revenue. The community has created more than 20 million characters since launch.
