Casual mobile game developer and publisher Agave Games raised $7 million in funding led by Felix Capital to build the next generation of mobile casual games. The Istanbul-based studio was founded by Oğuzhan Merdivenli, Ali Baran Terzioglu, Alper Oner, and Burak Kar and completed its first round of investment back in September 2021.
The $7 million investment saw Balderton Capital and 500 Startups Turkey participating alongside Felix Capital. This also marks Felix Capital’s first investment in Turkey, and the UK-based investor said they’re looking forward to investing more in Turkey and exploring the fastly growing gaming space.
Felix Capital met the Agave Games team via Akin Babayigit from Tripledot Studios and Rina Sirinoglu, the co-founder of Peak Games and current co-founder of Spyke Games. Babayigit invested in the pre-seed round of Agave Games, back in 2021.
The UK-based venture capital said in a blog post:
“We’ve been immediately impressed by Burak, Alper, Baran, and Oğuzhan’s track record in gaming. Together, they have built some of the most successful puzzle games on the market and worked at the most respected gaming companies in Turkey (Good Job Games and Fugo), whose games reached hundreds of millions of installs globally.
“But more importantly, we were blown away by their humility, drive, and ambition, and we loved the fact that they’ve known each other since high school.”
The investors were also impressed with the co-founders’ knowledge and experience in “what hypergrowth looks like” and added that they’re happy to invest in a team that “shares a passion for providing great gaming experiences to their community of players around the world.”
The Turkish gaming space —especially the mobile games market— continues to grow, despite the ongoing economic woes the country faces. Another Turkish startup, Yin Yang Games announced that it has raised $1M for its NFT card game called Reincarnation just a day ago.
Overall, Turkish video game companies received over $330 million in Q1 2022 alone, and investments in the country’s ecosystem continue strong.
