Three former Supercell staffers who worked in key roles on Clash games have set up new Helsinki studio Bit Odd.
The start-up just announced a funding round of €5m ($5.3m) led by Supercell, King, Roblox and Dream Games backer Index Ventures, plus angels Eric Seufert and Stephane Kurgan.
Bit Odd’s co-founders are former Clash Of Clans game lead and art director Lasse Louhento, Clash universe game developer and artist Jani Lintunen and Clash lead artist Taneli Oksama. The trio worked together for over six years at Supercell on Clash titles.
Elsewhere on the founding team there’s ops specialist Teemu Halminen, who has previously held roles at Lightneer and Wargaming, former indie developer, Unity and Wargaming engineer Ruoyu Sun and developers Toni Pesola and Juuso Toikka.
The studio is aiming to create “moments of wonder, of weirdness and delight,” says Bit Odd co-founder Lasse Louhento.
“We started Bit Odd because we felt something was amiss in the world of gaming,” he said in a blog post. “Not because there isn’t phenomenal talent and amazing titles out there – there are. But the huge boom in mobile gaming has produced something of a gold rush. It’s fuelled a kind of Wild West, ‘finance-first’ thinking, where developers fixate on what the competition is doing, on analytics, on execution, on playing it safe.”
“Our team at Bit Odd is, well, a bit odd in believing that game design should be about making a leap of faith – not based on data but on feeling, on what stirs the soul, on visiting uncharted waters, on the ideas and artisanal touches and magical moments that make up a rich and unique player experience.”
Index investor Sofia Dolfe added: “Bit Odd have assembled a first-class team and possess a clear vision that sets them apart from the pack. Their sense of quirkiness, fun and creativity taps into something that’s fallen out of focus in gaming. Along with their track record of making genre-defining, break-out hits, we believe their first release will be something extraordinary.”
