Rocky Road has announced that it secured $2.5 million in seed funding to develop its first mobile casual MMO game.
Crowberry Capital and Sisu Games Ventures led the round.
Rocky Road also intends to use the investment to double its Iceland-based staff and establish a new studio in Ukraine as well.
Rocky Road seeks to hire 3D designers and software engineers for its new studio in Kyiv primarily. In addition, the upcoming game by Rocky Road will be open-world based on real-world map data.
“I have always been a fan of huge game worlds where players can interact with one another, meet new people and create long-lasting relationships,” says Rocky Road CEO and co-founder Thor Fridriksson. “The problem with the overwhelming majority of current open-world games is that they are incredibly complicated and have a very steep learning curve which prevents the majority of gamers from getting into the game. We are building Rocky Road on the premise that normal people are excited to play and socialize in a massive game world, and we are focused on delivering that experience in an accessible way.”
The new studio, formed in 2022 by Thor Fridriksson, Sveinn Davidsson, Vala Halldorsdottir, is based in Iceland. Fridriksson is the founder of the mobile app QuizUp, while Davidsson and Halldorsdottir are former executives at Plain Vanilla Games.
Glu Mobile acquired Plain Vanilla Games in a $1.2 million deal back in 2016, but it is now part of the Electronic Arts family following Glu’s $2.1 million purchase by EA in February 2021.
Fridriksson will lead Rocky Road as CEO. Davidsson and Halldorsdottir will fill the COO and chief design officer roles, respectively.
Crowberry Capital partner Jenny Ruth also spoke about the founders of the Rocky Road, saying the founders have “extraordinary pedigree in mobile games.”
Crowberry Capital partner Jenny Ruth commented: “Like all the best games studios, the Rocky Road founders have extraordinary pedigree in mobile games, with extensive experience in scaling up gaming platforms with over 100 million users. We love to back diverse teams with wide backgrounds that have deep sector experience. The Rocky Road team fits that profile perfectly.”
In other European gaming development news, Finnish developer Social First has raised $2.5 million to create cross-platform, social games.
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