Bored Ape Metaverse Sees First Public Playtest

The long-awaited gaming metaverse from the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Otherside has officially begun letting users get a sneak peek at what they can expect to experience when it is finally released.

This past Saturday, Yuga Labs invited 4,300 “Voyagers”, to participate in a tour/tech demo of the newly created ape-inhabited space. All Otherside players will have to embark on a similar journey prior to unlocking the whole metaverse, which is still under development

The allotted players who participated in the meta tour of the “Biogenic Swamp'”, which encapsulates the Otherside center, this past weekend were all holders of the recently controversial “Otherdeeds,” deeds to plats of digital land in the game.

A litepaper released right after the tech demo, detailed how Otherdeeed holders as well as “selected third-party developers” would be able to play during the game's first stage of development.

The litepaper details how “Phase 1” will have Otherdeed owners embark on an 11-part story named Voyager’s Journey, “surrounding a mysterious Obelisk that has appeared in the Otherside universe.” In this initial phase, players will be able to help developers create pieces of the universe, due to the Otherside Development Kit, a user-friendly set of creation tools.

“We believe in the extraordinary power of community and have seen firsthand how it can be a significant force for good in this industry,” the litepaper stated. “We aim to incentivize, empower, and recognize the expression, creativity, and ingenuity of Otherside’s community of contributors.”

Detailed in the litepaper as well was Otherside's continued push for interoperability within its metaverse, the feature to easily transfer one item from one meta to another, or even to a game. Yuga sees this as a big catalyst within the space as an “open metaverse, gives users the power, unlike the formally known Facebooks Meta, and other centralized projects of similar ilk.

This is still very early for Yuga but is very promising to see its continued commitment even in these downtrodden times the industry is currently going through. Some of the features have been called pie in the sky, but as Yuga has shown us in the past nothing is too big for these Bored Apes.