Turkish mobile studio Bigger Games has raised $25 million in Series A funding to scale its flagship title Kitchen Masters.
The company shared the news in a short blog post and explained the investment round was led by Goldwater Capital with additional backing from Arcadia Gaming Partners, Index Ventures, and Play Ventures.
It said the cash injection will enable it to expand its team by attracting “world-class talent” and scale Kitchen Masters by introducing the mobile puzzler to new markets.
Bigger Games was established by Hakan Ulvan, Yagiz Akpek, and Erkan Gurel in 2019 and quickly attracted the attention of investors. As noted by VentureBeat, the company raised $6 million in December 2020 with the intention of driving into the casual puzzle genre.
Ulvan, Akpek, and Gurel previously worked on Toy Blast and Toon Blast at Peak Games, which was acquired by mobile juggernaut Zynga in 2020 for $1.85 billion.
Just a couple of years later, Zynga was purchased by Grand Theft Auto maker Take-Two Interactive at a valuation of $12.7 billion.
Turkish game studios are juggernauts in the world of hypercasual games
Investors have pumped million of dollars into Turkish studios in recent years—and those splashing the cash seem particularly interested in studios operating in the casual market.
In 2021, Zynga purchased three hypercasual studios based in Turkey. Prior to that, Royal Match developer Dream Games netted $50 million through an investment round led by Index Ventures with participation from Balderton Capital and Makers Fund.
More recently, Turkish mobile tech company Mega Fortuna received a $10 million investment from Aonic, while Istanbul-based studio Grand raised $30 million to expand its slate of mobile titles.