Türkiye-based mobile game studio Mindtail has successfully completed a $2 million investment round. Led by APY Ventures, this pre-seed investment process was carried out alongside Inveo Ventures and Ak Portföy GSYF.
The company aims to triple its team size in the short term, with its first game announcement expected soon.
A Next-Gen Approach to the Hybrid Casual Puzzle Category
Founded by R. Tamer Özgen, Umut Yıldız, Sarper Karabağ, and Doğuşcan Öztürk, Mindtail aims to develop the next generation of hybrid casual puzzle games using an AI-supported production model. The founding team brings together experience from industry leaders such as Dream Games, King, Tactile, Ace Games, and Codeway. Ece Özgüle serves as the Art Director.
The team has played active roles in product, growth, and development for games reaching hundreds of millions of users, including Royal Match, Royal Kingdom, Lily’s Garden, Candy Crush Soda, and the Braindom series.
Keçeli: “Game Production as a Capital Efficiency Game”
Mustafa Keçeli, Fund Manager at APY Ventures said:
“What sets Mindtail apart is a founding philosophy that views game making not just as a creative discipline, but as a game of capital efficiency when the economics, production architecture, and timing align. A team that has held critical roles in globally successful games, putting AI-native production at the center of the company DNA from day one, turns economic disadvantages per iteration directly into advantages in a hit-driven category.”
Haluk Nişli from Inveo Ventures noted that the Turkish gaming industry is entering a new era on the global stage:
“The Mindtail team’s history of working together, their depth in product and growth, and their fast prototyping culture embody the traits that studios making a difference in this period must possess.”
Hüseyin Çelik from Ak Portföy GSYF added:
“Mindtail stands out among next-gen game companies with its internationally successful founding team and AI-focused production approach. Turkey’s recent billion-dollar exits strongly demonstrate the ecosystem’s global potential.”
Özgen: “We Aim to Set a New Standard”
Mindtail Co-founder and CEO R. Tamer Özgen said:
“This investment round is the moment where the experience we have built as a founding team—both together and individually over the years—materializes. By combining what we’ve learned from products reaching hundreds of millions of players with an AI-native production model, we aim to set a new standard in the hybrid casual puzzle category. We have created a meaningful option pool for colleagues joining us from all areas of game production. One of our top priorities as a team is to ensure founder-employee alignment from day one.”
On an exclusive comment to Mobidictum, R. Tamer Özgen shared:
“The real shift in the mobile game market over the last three or four years has been the total disruption of production economics. For a game at the scale we’re aiming for—meaning high art quality and a robust software infrastructure—it used to take months to reach the market and undergo data testing; today, with a properly established AI-native pipeline, that process is reduced to weeks.
Özgen continued:
We built Mindtail around this new equation. If you can truly lower your cost per iteration, your mathematical probability of landing a hit in a hit-driven category increases. At Mindtail, we aim to produce the output of a 20-person studio with a team of just 7; because today, the advantage lies not in the size of the staff, but in the intelligence of the production architecture. For us, this isn’t just a matter of speed—it represents a fundamental change in how we view the category.”
