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Turkish mobile gaming studio Dream Games has raised $7.5 million in seed funding to develop casual mobile puzzle games. The company was founded by former Peak Games employees, who worked on popular titles like Toy Blast and Toon Blast.
Venture capital firm Makers Fund led the round of investment, with co-investment from London-based early-stage venture capital firm Balderton Capital. Dream Games also plans to put the funding towards building its team, with a goal of 20 employees in the first year and five-fold over the next two years.
“Casual puzzle games are some of the most successful and long-lasting titles in the industry, with recent successes showing there’s further room for growth,” said Michael Cheung, partner at Makers Fund.
“The Dream Games team’s achievements speak to a dedication and devotion to cracking the genre; together with their focus on Istanbul, a city we believe will be the next major hub for gaming. We’re honored to be supporting them early in their journey.”
Dream Games focusing on single game
The company was co-founded by CEO Soner Aydemir, Peak Games’ former product director. Other members of the team include former Peak Games engineering leads Ikbal Namli and Hakan Saglam, along with product manager Eren Sengul and 3D artist Serdar Yilmaz.
“Supercell built amazing games with very small teams proving you don’t need huge teams spread across regions to build something people want to play. What you do need, however, is a talented team,” commented Aydemir on the investment.
“We plan to focus our investments on building a highly skilled team to develop high-quality games. We don’t believe in a hit-or-miss approach towards game development. For us, its evolution over innovation, execution over ideas.”
Aydemir describes Dream Games’ approach as focusing on a “single high-quality, long-standing game” instead of multiple mediocre titles. He would rather have people playing “one game for 10 years than losing interest every six months when something new comes along.” He also claims that Dream Games is part of the flourishing gaming ecosystem in Istanbul, a region that is establishing itself as a leading market.
In 2017, Istanbul-based mobile technology company Peak Games sold its card and board games studio to mobile gaming giant Zynga (NASDAQ: ZNGA) for $100 million. Zynga later opened a studio in Istanbul and acquired Turkish developer Gram Games for $250 million. Dream Games hopes to attract top talent to join Turkey’s gaming industry, which includes competitor studios like Good Job Games, Ruby Games and Bigger Games.
