Nonstop Games Raises $2.9 Million, Makes Singapore Home

Singapore-based Nonstop Games has raised a $2.9 million seed round led by Creandum and Lifeline Ventures. The investment allows Nonstop Games to continue building its upcoming free-to-play (F2P) game, Heroes of Honor. The four founding brains behind Nonstop Games are Juha Paananen (CEO), Henric Suuronen (President), Teemu Ikonen (CTO), and Henrik Karlström (Lead Programmer). Vlad Micu, our guest writer, actually wrote about Nonstop Game first on Tech in Asia last year.

The investment will also give Nonstop Games the opportunity to hire one person in San Francisco who will focus on marketing and customer acquisition. Paananen believes it’s an essential part of the team. He explains:

I think Finland (where I’m from originally), with Clash of Clans, Angry Birds, Alan Wake, Max Payne, etc. is a great example that great games can be built almost anywhere. But lot of the business side is really concentrated in the US.

OK, but why is Nonstop Games in Singapore?

Simple. Proximity to other Asian markets makes Singapore an attractive place for Paananen and his co-founders. Through the phone, I asked whether places like Bangkok, Bandung, or even Ho Chi Minh City might actually be better bases to invest and set up in a game studio. But Paananen believes that Singapore is able to attract the needed talent both locally and also from Europe. “Our philosophy is that we want to build THE best team in the world making F2P games for touch devices and I think we can build that in Singapore,” said Paananen.

So far Nonstop Games has already launched two games as pilot tests. Dollar Isle and Paint Stars both have a combined 500,000 downloads and Paananen says that they drive decent revenue. The company will continue to update both of them as the team switches its focus to Heroes of Honor, a mobile fantasy strategy based game which is scheduled to launch around April or May this year.

I’m not sure what exactly the game is about, but I was told that Heroes of Honor allows players to “do coordinated attacks with up to thousands of players playing real time in the same world.” The game will be available on iOS and Android at the same time. So stay tuned.