Perth-based VR social gaming company Ready Team One has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds and grow its business across Australia and internationally.
A graduate of the Plus Eight accelerator program, Ready Team One’s founders, Chris Cheng, Scott Whiteley and James Tang are all passionate gamers, and began developing their own gaming system in 2018, aiming to create the ultimate immersion experience for players.
The company’s journey started on a game night where the founders played VR on Chris’s HTC Vive headset. They were unsatisfied with the available gaming experiences in the market, and longed to recreate the social connections that they had during the golden LAN days.
After many sleepless nights, they developed the minimum viable product of their first sci-fi game titled First Contact. The game was highly praised, winning a VR/AR Game of the Year Award, and the company gained the validation needed to move into their Perth flagship arena in 2020. Unfortunately, the global pandemic hit just as the arena was launched.
The startup faced many challenges, but with a focus on product and experience development, they were still able to grow year on year.
They have since generated more than $850,000 of revenue since launch, and they want to take their product to the rest of the world. They have secured another licensee in Queensland, and are in the final stages of negotiation with others in the USA and the Middle East.
In-house games
Developed entirely in-house by their passionate team, the company’s library now has four games, each with a unique genre:
- First Contact, a sci-fi space adventure game.
- Isle of Trials: Curse of the Fire God, combines escape rooms with obstacle courses, won the 2022 Innovation in Game Design
- award.
- Tactical Response: Apocalypse and Tactical Response (PvP), have been highly rated by players as “Call of Duty” simulators!
Other games on the horizon include a one-of-a-kind Full body Horror / Thriller game Eldritch Manor, built on Unreal Engine 5. When combined with full body and finger-tracking mechanics, this could create a truly terrifying challenge that attracts horror and gaming enthusiasts.
The company’s mission is to “blow the minds of a million players – as they team up to have fun together and adventure through our virtual worlds.”
After opening their flagship store above Murray Street Mall, the team is planning to open its second store in an international city on the east coast of Australia.
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Visit their Birchal page here, for more information on their crowd-funding campaign.