Daylight Studios gets $704k to help game developers around the world enter Southeast Asia

Singapore indie game developer Daylight Studios today announced the raising of S$975,000 (US$704,000) in series A funding from Raffles Venture Partners, Koh Boon Hwee, Lim Swee Yong, Harry Inaba, and three other angel investors. Koh was an early investor in renowned gaming hardware company Razer.

The gaming studio last raised S$839,000 (US$660,000), so factoring in a seed round of S$300,000 (US$216,000), its total investment to date stands at roughly S$2.1 million (US$1.5 million).

The investment will go toward two specific goals: developing new original IP in Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?!, and setting up its mobile publishing subsidiary, Quest Drop.

The former will be the studio’s first foray into producing PC content, and will launch in summer this year. It has successfully completed the Steam Greenlight process, where user votes from the community determine if a game can be sold on Steam. It took Holy Potatoes! just one week to get “Greenlit.” Some independently-developed games can languish on Greenlight for about a year before getting Greenlit.

Taking into account recent game announcements such as Phoenix Studio’s Dead Sea and Witching Hour Studios’ Masquerada: Songs and Shadows, it does seem like the Asian gaming studios are moving towards premium PC content in a bid to stay ahead of the ever-growing pack.

For founder Don Sim, though, the decision to make the shift was not about developing new games, but about developing new IP. “To do so, we have decided that the premium PC market is the logical first step,” he explains. “The premium PC market has always been supported by passionate and discerning players – perfect for a budding new IP. We will develop for mobile, of course, but timing is everything.”

As for Quest Drop, the main aim is to become the “bridge between game publishers outside of Southeast Asia and the Southeast Asian audience,” a goal that is atypical of publishers in the region.

“The difference between Quest Drop and other publishers is simply this: our quest to establish our network and foundation in Southeast Asia will not only benefit the games we publish, but also that of our partners who wish to self-publish in Southeast Asia but have no idea how,” says Sim.

Quest Drop will become the first Southeast Asian mobile game publisher with development experience. Its next step: to “establish our distribution and support network in Southeast Asia.” It will be setting up its own subsidiary, Quest Drop (Thailand) Limited, in Bangkok in the coming months.

“Daylight Studios has always been a visionary game developer committed to the mobile game space, starting with its foray into feature phone development back in 2011 with Reign of Heroes,” says Raffles Venture Partners’ co-founder and executive director Yap Ning Jee. “We feel that the team now is very experienced in both mobile game development and its monetization, and this is why we want to support them.”