Independent Game Development Studio Welevel It announced today that it raised $5.7 million in funding to transform programmatic game development.
Bitkraft Ventures leads the Munich-based company. Welevel CEO Christian Heimerl said in an interview with GamesBeat that the investment allowed Welevel’s lean development team to expand its innovative AI tools to simplify game development and create dynamic personalized gameplay.
Welevel has also announced plans to expand its upcoming Triple-A Sandbox Survival Games to its development team. The project began development using Welevel’s internal generative model in 2021 and will enter early next year.
Other investors in the round include BMWK (DLR), Goodwater and Angel Investors Chris Carvalho (a member of Roblox’s board), Daniel Weinand (co-founder of Shopify), Heiko Hubertz, Heiko Hubertz (founder of Bigpoint), Kun Gao (Cofunchyroll) and other gaming industry executives.
Jaimel said Verville is building a game powered by passion rather than monetization. To compete with giant gaming companies, Welevel leverages AI to simplify production without compromising quality and creativity.
The studio’s AI technology innovates innovations about world building, NPC behavior and task generation through sophisticated algorithms that enable each player to tailor interactions. The system allows for adaptive storytelling, where player choices shape the world in unexpected ways, thus providing a truly dynamic experience.
“We are big fans of survival games and open sandboxes, but when we look for a game in those games that match the scale of a lot of triple experiences, we go out empty-handed. Triple-A development requires a lot of resources and budget, and both independent game studios usually don’t have it,” Heimerl said. “After using AI in my previous company, I realized it had to enhance the potential of small, enthusiastic teams making games.”
He added: “Over the past four years, our team has designed tools and AI platforms that allow us not only to compete for Triple A Studios, but to surpass them with a living, breathing world. With Bitkraft, we found a companion who shared our passion and vision. Our development process is unique, so we can create games for ours as well as for many players.”
Welevel’s debut game offers a transformation for the sandbox survival genre by introducing a world full of responsiveness, developing and challenging life that players have never done before. (Of course, we want to know how it differs from things like sky without people).
The company says the game surpasses traditional resource management systems by establishing dynamic relationships between players and the environment. NPCs come to life, remember the background of the action in the game, build relationships and assist player goals. Other conventional survival systems such as construction and trade are enhanced through the generation process, thus giving players greater freedom to build the world they need.
“Chris brings a unique combination of continuous exports, technical depth and excellent audience understanding,” said Jasper Brand, partner at Bitkraft Ventures. “While it’s a daunting task for emerging studios to take on Triple A’s ambitions with a large number of genres, especially in the early stages of adopting AI in games, we believe that a lean team that rethinks development in time and scope and breaks current limitations will unlock unprecedented gameplay and circulation.”
He added: “Welevel has built an outstanding technical foundation in just 4 years for only a few developers and is making creative decisions at speed and marginal cost. They are fun, playable prototypes already feature a wide range of gaming systems, high visual polishes and the experience that can capture players over 100 hours.”
In addition to the initial project, the team plans to expand user-generated content and aspirations to expand to other types and settings. The company will be GDC in 2025.
Bitkraft Ventures is a global early-stage investment platform for gaming, Web3 and immersive technologies, with assets under management totaling over $1 billion.
The long and tortuous road to Welevel
Jaimel opened the company in 2021 in 1921. Prior to this round, he raised about $1 million. The company has 12 people and hopes to grow to 30 this year. But game developers are rarely found in Munich, and I noticed that there are not as many game companies.
“Nothing crazy happens here,” Herrimer said.
He pointed out Greenlod Any or not. When asked about his eventual becoming a game developer, Hiemerl said he was a hardcore gamer all his life. He played online MMO Ultima as a kid and he said “spoiled my school career.” He remembered that when he was 13 or 14, he played games like a “madman”. But this is the time when you have to pay your computer time by hour. He spent about 2,000 euros on his parents. Still, he managed to convince his relatives to give him money so he could play for a few minutes at a time.
“No other game moves me like Ultima Online. That’s just this kind of flare. I can still hear the music from the main menu,” he said.
He managed to avoid being addicted to World of Warcraft. And he was able to build and sell several early AI companies. Fast forward to Covid, and Heimerl sells one of his companies. He sat at home and did nothing.
“I’m chatting with friends and hanging out with friends online. They told me they’re starting to buy new computers to play the Age of Empires. So we bought new computers to play this super old game.”
He added: “If you have a brand new computer at home, you won’t turn it off after playing with a friend of entertainment age for two hours. So I was thinking, “Hey, what am I playing now?” ”
He tried the shooter on PlayStation, but he was really good at aiming. He often goes to YouTube to learn how to shoot. And he was distracted by the people who posted Minecraft videos. He started watching people play Minecraft, and he found it was super entertaining. Then he started playing Minecraft and found how fun it was, and he watched other survival games like the Forest’s Son, Rust and Arc Survival. He and the son of the forest found you playing for a few days and it was over.
He tried to modify the game, but he didn’t really succeed. He then discovered Sim Game City Skylines, a city builder. He poured thousands of hours and modified it for it. He joined the Reddit and Facebook community and talked a lot about survival games and RPGs.
“People keep cutting down 2,000 trees or 10,000 trees. And you know you only like to cut down 20 or 30 trees. You build these beautiful towns and buildings, but it ends up being a ghost town. I think it would be a great combination to have the villagers still live in the survival town you actually build while also being able to collect resources. Just live there and bring life into your ghost town. That’s the overall idea.”
A friend told him that it was the stupidest idea he had ever heard. A friend told him he needed a lot of money, as if he was building a triple game. Firend is said to start with mobile games.
“But my goal is not to do business mainly in the gaming industry,” he said. “My vision is more like I want to make this game than just make money.”
My friend kept saying he needed a lot of money to do this. He remembered his AI companies, including those of travel recommendation engines, and he considered AI solutions.
In Munich, he had a bad time and then tried to find a programmer who knew about Unreal Game Engine. So he turned to artificial intelligence. He saw AI getting better and better. When generative AI took off, he explored the technology and believed that the focus was not on the best AI model.
“The point is that you have a system that can be used with many tools. You have a very clear vision of how things work and how to attach,” he said.
The gamer told him that his project was meaningless. He firmly believes that these people will never change because they are so trapped in the old ways. They wrote about artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, he began to teach Unreal Engine at the university. He found that people who are interested in illusion and who are young can consider new tools.
“That’s where we started bringing talent into the company,” he said.
Soon, the company figured out how to automatically generate new things, including stories, villages, NPCs, world contexts, and more.
The game will be a multiplayer cross-platform title where you can play with others and bring other people’s cities and villagers into your game. Jaimel said the game is about 70% completed and the team is producing more content and polishing it. They use AI to produce more, and they have started testing the game with other players. Public testing may be conducted in the second half of the year.
Hiring talent is getting easier now, Heimer said. With a $5.7 million bank, it may be easier.
“Perhaps people can make cheap AI games that make dreams come true,” he said. “It’s almost where we come from.”
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