Voya Games Secures $5M to Build Dino-Themed Crypto Crafting Sim—Because Jurassic Park Meets DeFi Is What 2025 Needed

Another day, another crypto gaming startup cashing in on nostalgia and blockchain hype. Voya Games just pocketed $5 million to develop a dinosaur-themed crafting simulator—presumably where players mint NFTs of T-Rex bones or trade virtual velociraptor skins on some obscure Layer 2.

The funding round screams ’bull market logic’: investors betting that gamers will prioritize tokenized prehistoric assets over, say, actual gameplay. But hey, if Axie Infinity taught us anything, it’s that play-to-earn mechanics can turn even the silliest concepts into gold mines—until the tokenomics implode.

One thing’s certain: the metaverse’s next apex predator might just be a pixelated stegosaurus with a yield-farming side hustle.

Craft World is expected to fully launch by the end of this year and will release for iOS, Android, and on the web as a browser game. 

VOYA Games was founded in 2023 and is tied to Angry Dynomites Lab, which released two pixelated dinosaur NFT collections on ethereum back in 2022. Loffler previously cofounded Kolibri Games, a mobile gaming studio with games like Idle Miner Tycoon: Gold & Cash, which has over 100 million downloads on Android alone. Kolibri was acquired by Ubisoft in 2020.

Mobile games have continued to make up a significant portion of the crypto gaming market. Game7 research found that mobile games made up 29% of game launches last year, with an additional 20% being Telegram games (which are also primarily mobile games). 

That means about half of crypto games have a mobile-first focus, and that doesn’t include the over 26% of crypto games that are launching in a browser, which can also be mobile-first titles.

Mobile games can be cheaper and easier to build than ambitious PC titles while having more opportunities for monetization via quick in-app purchases. They also generate more revenue than PC titles overall and have more players. Plus, mobile games have the additional advantage that their audiences are more used to monetization strategies like microtransactions and paid tiers of access. 

“Development costs for resource management games are comparatively low. This allows us to release updates quickly and frequently, enabling us to identify and address issues early based on player feedback,” the VOYA Games team wrote in its litepaper.

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