Boomlagoon Raises €2.59 Million, Hints at New Game


    Finnish mobile gaming company Boomlagoon announced today it has raised a solid $3.6 million (€2.59 million) in funding in a round led by Northzone with additional investments by Finland’s Inventure and 360 Capital Partners. This also joined Jari Ovaskainen and London Venture Partners, who previously invested in Boomlagoon.

    Boomlagoon’s previous title was Nobel Nutlings, a physics-based racer where you had to pilot some silly beavers to complete courses in all manner of wooden logs and cars. The feeling when opening up the app was that it felt very “Angry Birds” in the artwork style, and in the three stars you received when you successfully completed the course. The similarities in artworks style were for good reason – the team was from three ex-Rovio employees and cofounder Tuomas Erikoinen was behind the artwork of the original Angry Birds characters.

    On the heels of this funding round is the hint that another new title is fast approaching, which we’re told by the team will likely be soft launched in a month or two. When talking to the team, they were tight lipped about what the gameplay will be like, except that it will be character-driven featuring Monsu, the nickname of a monster. “The only similarity between Nobel Nutlings is the style, and in creating a great character. It’s not going to be a squeal,” says Olli Laesvirta, CMO of Boomlagoon.

    Nobel Nutlings was interesting for a Finnish game in the sense that it created LINE Nutlings tournament, published through LINE the Japanese chat app. At the moment, the new game isn’t going to be going through a third-party publisher. Antti Stén, CEO of Boomlagoon tells us, “We’re launching it ourselves, and we’re not looking into a publisher there. I trust its going to go really well with that.”

    They say the benefit of publishing Nutlings on Line is that they received a really good understanding of what it takes to create games for an Asian audience. Monsu has an ambiguous, if not Japanese, sounding name to it, so it will be interesting to see how they tackle the Asian markets.

    Currently Boomlagoon has eight team members, and with this funding round they plan to expand the team.