Electronic music producer deadmau5 has been vocal about his support of and interest in metaverse technologies over the past couple years and has been involved in several virtual music experiences. Last year, he created a new music metaverse gaming platform with fellow musician Richie Hawtin called PIXELYNX, which aims to provide new opportunities for artists to create experiences for fans in both the digital and physical worlds.
PIXELYNX previously announced a partnership with AR developer Niantic to build out its mobile games, the first of which — ELYNXIR — was officially unveiled at the Niantic Lightship Summit last month, where Niantic also announced an investment in the startup.
The first trailer for the game doesn’t reveal too much to go off of, but it includes some cool visuals and is described as a music-focused experience that’s similar to Niantic’s Pokémon Go! game.
“ELYNXIR introduces an entirely new level of creative immersion and gameplay in the music metaverse. It’s a world built on the premise that artists and fans want fun and exciting new ways to interact and drive culture together,” said PIXELYNX co-founder and CEO Inder Phull.
The branding for the game was created by award-winning creative director Joe Perez of WØRKS, and PIXELYNX also recently announced that it is working with web3-focused computing technology company Hadean to bring the game to life.
Hadean’s distributed cloud platform will connect artists’ unique virtual ecosystems via what it calls a “hub” world, which will make for a continuous experience and will help scale ELYNXIR. In the hub world, fans will be able to attend virtual concerts, play games, unlock NFTs, and more.
“We plan to leverage [Hadean’s] technology to provide a seamless experience of the Music Metaverse for fans all around the world, where they will be able to enjoy and share content from their favorite artists, engage with a global community of fellow music-lovers, and experience live events together in ways never before seen online,” said PIXELYNX CTO Charles Tolman in a statement. “We could not be more excited to partner with Hadean to realize this grand vision for the future of music."
ELYNXIR is currently in beta and will be available to the public in August.