Text | Pan Xiaoyu
Editor | Peng Xiaoqiu
36氪 was informed that the smart board game creation platform “CubyFun” has recently received nearly 10 million yuan in angel round financing. This round of financing was invested by Guohong Jiaxin and individual investor Professor Gao Bingqiang. This round of financing will be mainly used for product research and development, channel expansion and other aspects.
In recent years, the wave of technology + consumption has continued to be hot, but this wave is more concentrated on small home appliances with functionality and practicality, or consumer-grade robots with educational attributes. In the offline entertainment field, technology has not yet fully penetrated it.
Nowadays, technological changes are more reflected in virtual games and mobile games. However, as a common way of offline games – board games, it lacks new imagination in intelligence, and has maintained the traditional way for many years. This way of offline rapid social networking has obviously reached an opportunity point to face superimposed technology and become intelligent.
As a result, the Shenzhen company CubyFun is committed to this, by launching its self-developed smart board game host product JOYO, to try intelligent interaction on traditional board games, so that children and young people can stay away from the screen and have more real face-to-face interaction. , connect each other. And launched the board game creation platform POLY in the form of iPad APP, so that ordinary users can also create an intelligent board game game.
CubyFun product form
Su Guanhua, founder of CubyFun, told 36Kr that smart board game console products can be simply understood as a Switch handle for offline games. By setting high-precision and visual recognition sensors in the host, it can recognize the player’s action positioning, gesture judgment, intelligent referee and other functions, and realize intelligent offline interaction.
Specifically, first, the host performs board map positioning according to the printed code points on the special paper; then according to the positioning coordinates, the player’s action information is sent back to its own game system; and the system can identify The rules of the game, make the corresponding sound and photoelectric response, etc.
The ability of the board game host to make automated feedback is mainly based on two factors. One is that the corresponding game database has been stored inside the system; the other is the core gameplay of board games – move. “The key to game design is to set rules and strategies around its core gameplay. In board games, the most essential gameplay is movement, so we need to make each movement change accordingly, and there is a feedback mechanism. “Su Guanhua said.
CubyFun Host
On the POLY platform, CubyFun sets up various visualization tools such as sound and lighting, as well as a graphical programming tool. And by setting up an architecture similar to the game design package, the image recognition, multi-axis gyroscope and other capabilities of hardware devices can be recreated by developers and reduce the difficulty of creation. That is, any ordinary user can independently create a new game through this iPad APP, combined with the official game design kit, and link with JOYO to achieve remote firmware upgrade (OTA).
In Su Guanhua’s view, from the software system to the hardware host, the entire system architecture together constitutes the core barrier of CubyFun. “On the one hand, it is the entire system from hardware, software, and APP; on the other hand, it is a deep understanding of game design. For example, after the touch screen has produced many new games, changes in the interaction method can directly innovate many gameplays.”
At present, the game categories designed by CubyFun are not only fast-paced board games, suitable for parties and family gatherings, but also several strong strategy board games jointly launched with third-party original board game teams. JOYO smart board games will also launch Kickstarter, the largest overseas crowdfunding platform for innovative products, and launch six existing main games this month.
CubyFun Products
CubyFun plans to focus on the overseas market first, with its own online games as the lead, and then promote the creation platform after accumulating a certain number of users. On the one hand, the development history of board games overseas is longer and the degree of acceptance is higher; on the other hand, based on the innovative consideration of new gameplay, the crowdfunding platform launched overseas has more co-creation attributes.
In terms of team, the core members of CubyFun are mainly from DJI. Among them, the founder and CEO Su Guanhua has worked for Evernote, Innovation Workshop, and DJI. During DJI, he participated in Robomaster S1, Spark drone, Mavic drone, and Osmo handheld. PTZ and other products were developed, and a total of 72 invention patents were obtained.
As the investor of this round, Guohong Jiaxin team believes, “CubyFun team’s innovative and creative ability is very outstanding, and it left a deep impression on us when we first came into contact with the project. The founding team is from DJI, leading and participating in a number of intelligent software companies. The development of hardware products has achieved good results. The team’s self-learning and iterative capabilities are very strong. I believe that it can continue to create creative and intelligent products and build its own brand and product moat. From an industry perspective, consumer electronics products There is a high industry ceiling, and with the provision of living requirements, there is still room for continuous digging and improvement of user needs.”
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