Mobile games company Chroma Studios from Copenhagen have secured $300,000 seed funding from Capnova, a Danish investment and development company. The investment sounds like a bold move, given that it is to a company that will be making their first title with the finances, but not quite as bold as Chroma Studios own ambitions. They’ve announced that the title will be a ‘Candy Crush killer’, how are they going to pull that one off?
Well the first thing to be noted is that while Chroma Studios is a relatively new company with no previous games to their name, the same cannot be said of the staff. Tim Shepard the founder and CEO explained to us how his team bring experience from products and projects, including Subway Surfers, Guitar Hero series, DJ Hero, Hitman, Moviestarplanet, Zombie Lane, and LEGO mobile. He also mentioned that the lead programmer has personally released 46 titles, many of which have been nominated for regional awards.
The company was founded in 2012 and until now has focussed on being a games-as-a-service specialist. Tim moved to Denmark from Finland where he had previously been working as a games designer at Digital Chocolate and told us that, “I bought all I had learned with me, and a vision to replicate the success of the Finnish industry here in [Denmark]”. The consultation services they offer are focused on Free-To-Play games development and operations, and Tim talked about how keen he and his team are to share their knowledge with the local community and contribute to the growing success in the Oresund area.
This ‘Candy Crush killer’ they are making is called ‘e: Click, Click, BOOM!’ and is based on the same match-3 mechanic you find in Candy Crush Saga and many of its peers. Tim tells us that they have developed an innovative iteration on it, but we’ll have to wait until they unveil the game at Pocket Gamer Connects to see what it is and try it out for ourselves.
One of the hooks they hope the game will have is its story. The gamer will play as a lost element accidentally created in the Large Hadron Collider who finds his way into the back door of the Internet. It’s basically an opportunity for Chroma Studios to fill their game with pop culture references and all the Internet memes you could imagine, which they are mining to make the game as humorous as possible. That sense of humour also spills over onto the company’s website as well where you’ll find images of Kanye West replacing actual portrait shots of the staff, while internet and geek catchphrases lurk in every shadow.
Tim Shepard explained, “As a new indie studio, we realize that we are in a bit of a David and Goliath situation. But we believe we are creating an excellent brand with the potential to be disruptive in this space. We’re looking forward to taking on the big guys.”
The backing for their dream has come from Capnova, who have a bit of a history in investments such as this. Looking through their portfolio you’ll find a number of other Danish companies listed who are working to make games across a number of genres which tells us that they have some experience in working with young games companies to help them grow and reach their market.
As mentioned earlier, we’ll be seeing Chroma Studios at the Pocket Gamer Connects conference here in Helsinki later in the month, and we look forward to trying out their game then.
