Portray Credit: TaleMonster Games
TaleMonster Games, an Istanbul studio based by High Games veterans on a mission to bring depth and creativity encourage to informal puzzle games, has raised $7 million in funding.
The funding will velocity up building of the team’s first titles — including the match-Three game Match Valley — and increase endured investment in the inventive and technical foundations for a novel generation of informal puzzle games.
Overall Catalyst led the round, alongside investments from A16z Speedrun, Arcadia, and Ludus Ventures.
Irem Sumer, CEO of TaleMonster acknowledged in an interview with GamesBeat that TaleMonster used to be born from a straightforward belief: Recently’s gamers maintain leveled up, and it’s time for his or her games to pause the identical.
“Now we had been working together for the final six years,” Sumer acknowledged. “All of us know each other from High Games. Now we maintain multidisciplinary skills at some stage in both inventive and technical disciplines, and after 5 years at High, we made up our minds to leave our jobs lastly and initiating our possess company.”
Sumer acknowledged many of the mobile gamers had been playing the identical mobile games for nearly a decade, and they developed serious gaming skills all over that point. However Sumer and her team believes that all over this time, the definition of informal avid gamers has modified. Whereas match-Three games are informal of their nature, gamers can manufacture skills playing them and switch into extra enjoy hardcore avid gamers.
She acknowledged these gamers “deserve games that appreciate their time, their skills and their consideration. So we’re looking to be the corporate that redefines what this implies in mobile gaming. That’s why we started TaleMonster Games.”
The founding team brings deep ride from about a of potentially the most winning games in the home, including titles constructed at High Games, the seminal Türkiye-basically based mobile game maker which used to be acquired by Zynga for $1.Eight billion in 2020.
“We’re a multidisciplinary founding team united by a shared obsession with product and a deep love for games,” acknowledged Sumer. “We started TaleMonster because we saw something lacking in the games we beloved. Informal games maintain change into too predictable, too optimized, and no longer sufficient stress-free. We assume gamers deserve greater: games that surprise, declare, and evolve with them.”
The TaleMonster team started with 5 cofounders including Sumer, Simay Kahraman, Berk Yasar, Emre Yanik, and Eren Saricicek. The truth there are two girls folk among the founders makes the corporate reasonably uncommon in the game industry — as latest endeavor capital stats cowl.
The team has years of ride building and scaling hit puzzle games, with a confirmed song document in crafting excessive-quality products terminate to prevent. With deep roots in both inventive and technical disciplines, TaleMonster is constructed to switch rapid, attain with care, and affirm games that final.
This seed round can also lend a hand TaleMonster scale its imaginative and prescient: building correctly to obtain, evergreen puzzle games that develop with their gamers. They opinion to magnify the team, velocity up building, and proceed investing in reusable programs that increase smarter game originate, personalized experiences, and efficient thunder material initiating to open sooner, learn sooner, and fabricate a portfolio of games that gamers can return to over time.
“Cellular gamers maintain modified. They’ve grown sharper, extra unique, and plenty more sturdy to brand. They’ll inform when a game is constructed with care and when it’s no longer,” acknowledged Sumer. “We desire each game we fabricate to in reality feel enjoy it respects your time, your consideration, and your skill.”
In a market the keep thousands of games open each year and most are forgotten within months, TaleMonster is taking a particular course. Their focal point isn’t factual on launching a single hit, nonetheless on building a team of passionate, unique these that might per chance assemble multiple standout titles over time.
By growing an environment the keep huge skills can thrive, the studio targets to manufacture no longer solely games that final, nonetheless a convention that lasts factual as long. Their first title, Match Valley, proves they’re on the lawful song, with gamers spending an common of Fifty two minutes in the game day to day.
“We’re building a team that grows with each title we open; appealing, unique, and unafraid to experiment. With this funding, we can prance sooner, exclaim greater, and encourage raising the bar for what informal games might per chance be.”
“At Overall Catalyst, we now maintain got a protracted-standing history of investing in gaming with Discord, Superplay, Mind Games and others,” acknowledged Zeynep Yavuz, partner at Overall Catalyst, in a message to GamesBeat. “With our investment in Talemonsters, we’re backing a team with deep ride and a modern imaginative and prescient for informal games—at a time when many maintain change into overly optimized and commoditized. Talemonsters is on a mission to bring encourage the stress-free with surprising twists, evolving gameplay, and challenges that develop with the player.”
Origins
The team started in February 2024, and they launched their first game Match Valley in September. They’ve been updating the game and maintain started growth marketing prior to now couple of months. The game for the time being has 50% day one retention, which draw 50% of gamers attain encourage after the first day. They play an common of Fifty two minutes per day. For mobile games, these are huge numbers, and it explains why the corporate has been in a pickle to steal a form of cash.
Whereas match-Three is a crowded genre, Sumer acknowledged that folk will seemingly agree that the core mechanics of her company’s game are unique. The title combines match-Three with tower defense mechanics.
Via inspiration, Sumer acknowledged, “We continually knew that we wished to pause something unique. We wished to surprise gamers. We played 1000’s of games over the course of months after we left our jobs.”
The company has 17 folk spread at some stage in multiple cities. By subsequent year, Sumer hopes the workers might per chance be doubled.
Rather plenty of the corporate’s workers attain from High Games nonetheless Türkiye has a series of game originate applications at universities turning out proficient game developers at an on a usual basis cadence — thanks to the success of High Games, in step with startups.witness knowledge. There are 796 game startups in Türkiye.
“For these that graduate from the university, and while you might per chance additionally very correctly be a major skills, gaming is a really tough profession course ahead of you, the family will increase that,” Sumer acknowledged.
Cellular gaming has had challenges in the wake of Apple’s willpower about a years prior to now to prioritize user privacy over focused classified ads. However Sumer is elated with how Türkiye’s game corporations maintain handled the adjustments and peaceable managed to develop their corporations.
“In Türkiye, we’re reasonably optimistic,” she acknowledged. “All americans’s striving to clarify the following genre and affirm opportunities to market.”