Indie developer Henchman & Goon announced earlier today that venture capital firm Altered Ventures has invested over $400,000 in its studio. The Norway-based team is developing the co-op puzzle game Pode, which still doesn’t have a release date yet but has won awards for its adorable artwork and polished aesthetic.
Though still in development, Pode won Best Casual Game at the Game Connection Development Awards last month, and it was nominated in two other categories. It is Henchman & Goon’s second title after its 2015 platformer Flem. The studio is a six-person team that officially formed in 2012.
Pode’s heroes are a rock named Bulder and fallen star Glo. They travel through a magical world based on the Norwegian landscape, solving environmental puzzles in their quest to get Glo home. It can be single-player or co-op, with two players each controlling one of the characters.
“Altered Ventures’ core team have collectively over 20 years of experience making, producing and publishing video games, and we recognized the potential in Pode immediately,” said Altered Ventures cofounder and managing partner Mario Valle-Reyes in a statement.
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Altered Ventures is one of the few firms that seeks solely to fund game development. Valle-Reyes spoke at the GamesBeat Summit last month about his plan to support games coming out of emerging markets. He has plenty of experience to back that up — he was director of business in emerging markets at Electronic Arts, and he’s an investor and board member of Gaming Partners, which seeks to boost the Latin American games industry. Henchman & Goon is its first Norwegian investment.
In 2015, funding for games dropped off slightly as investors looked elsewhere with their checkbooks. But a crop of recent investments and funds shows that maybe interest is reemerging in indie development and that ecosystem. Former PlayStation CEO Jack Tretton recently announced Interactive Gaming Ventures, which plans to invest in two to three indie devs annually over the next seven years. Indie publisher Raw Fury raised over $600,000 from investors like former Unity CEO David Helgason and Multiplay founder Craig Fletcher. And e-commerce platform Xsolla started a $30 million fund last year to invest in games in return for royalties.
