Polyarc co-founders Tam Armstrong, Danny Bulla, and Chris Alderson. Photo via Polyarc.
Polyarc co-founders Tam Armstrong, Danny Bulla, and Chris Alderson. Photo via Polyarc.

There’s another startup in Seattle developing virtual reality technology.

polyarc11The latest is Polyarc, a new company that today announced a $3.5 million investment round led by China-based UCCVR, with participation from Colopl VR Fund and Vulcan Capital.

The startup, which employs six people, is building “immersive VR games” but isn’t revealing much about specifics.

In March, Polyarc was a recipient of an Epic Games Unreal Developer grant for an unannounced project codenamed “Moss.” The company expects to release their first game on multiple platforms in Q4 of next year.

What we do know, however, is that Polyarc has an impressive founding team made up of Bungie veterans with a wealth of experience in the game industry.

Tam Armstrong, co-founder and CEO, spent more than six years at Bungie, where he led an animation engineering team that developed the hugely-popular Destiny game. He also worked on the engineering team that developed Halo: Reach.

“From the moment we first saw VR prototypes our minds have been racing with the possibilities for intuitive interaction in games,” Armstrong said in a statement. “We’re grateful for the opportunity to be working with investors and partners that bring such a wealth of enthusiasm, industry experience and business acumen.”

Destiny was the most-searched for game in 2014, according to Bing.
Polyarc’s co-founders all worked on Destiny.

Armstrong founded Polyarc last year with Danny Bulla and Chris Alderson. Bulla is another Bungie veteran, spending nearly four years as a senior gameplay designer on Destiny. He previously worked at Rockstar Games and Midway. Bulla and Armstrong also both spent two months last year as prototype consultants for Oculus.

Alderson, meanwhile, spent seven years at Bungie from 2008 to 2015 as a character art lead, working on both Destiny and Halo titles.

“Our immediate goal is to make full use of the immersion and physical interaction made possible only with VR to create thoughtfully designed, appealing, and accessible games with high player value,” Alderson wrote on his LinkedIn page about Polyarc.

Polyarc’s vision may extend worldwide, given the investment from UCCVR, which operates an investment fund and VR/AR accelerator out of Shanghai.

“Polyarc’s core team background speaks for itself,” UCCVR founder Allan Foo said in a statement. “They are a group of gaming industry veterans with a proven track record and a deep understanding of VR technology.”

Polyarc is one of several virtual reality/augmented reality startups in Seattle. Others include Envelop VRPluto VR, VREALPixvanaVRstudiosConvrge and Endeavor One, among others.

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