First investments in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia: The Games Fund supports Eastern European game studios

In April, we talked about the launch of a new fund in $50M with a focus on Eastern European game startups — The Games Fund. Yesterday it was announced the first 4 deals of the new structure: 2 investments were made to Belarusian studios, 1 to Ukrainian, and also a startup from Russia was financed. Here is a look at all four.

Vandrouka Games is a small product company, launched in March last year by people from Awem Games, which is now based in Minsk. In the Seed-round, they have received $1M for developing new casual mobile games they specialize in and for expanding the team, which now consists of just 10 people.

Their “neighbours” from Minsk, the Purple Games studio, also raised $1M, of which $450 000 came from The Games Fund. The team consists of 25 people in the match-3 genre and specializes in casual games. Last year the studio was invested in by MY.GAMES, part of the Mail.ru Group, which in turn grew into The Games Fund.

In the Pre-seed round, the fund supported Ukrainian studio Jarvi Games, investing $510 000 in them. The team has ambitions to break into the Eastern European gaming market with Vice Online, a multiplayer mobile sandbox game — something close to the Grand Theft Auto Online experience but designed for mobile devices from scratch. The game is still in the early stages of development.

The Games Fund has invested $450 000 more in Hypemasters, a studio with backers from Russia. It focuses on creating real-time mobile strategy games. The first, World War Commander, is set during the Second World War. The game is currently in beta testing in Russia and is showing good results.