Gardens raises $31.3 million for fantasy action role-playing game

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Gardens, a new indie game studio, has raised $31.3 million in funding to create a fantasy action role-playing game.

That's a lot of money for a company that started in the summer of 2021 and has only 12 employees. But investors were impressed with the playable demo the team showed off in March at the Game Developers Conference, Gardens CEO Chris Bell said in an interview with GamesBeat. He started the company with his brother Stephen Bell and technical director Lexie Dostal.

Lightspeed Venture Partners and Krafton led the round, with participation from Dreamhaven, TIRTA, Rendered VC, Transcend Fund, Funplus and more. When it comes to gaming startups, relatively few have raised such funding, especially in a tough economy. I can think of Believer, ProbablyMonsters and Theorycraft. It's a very small group, and they emphasize craftsmanship at the center.

"We're raising enough money to meet the vision of the project. It's an ambitious project that we want it to be," Stephen Bell said in an interview. "We wanted to be able to accomplish everything we want to try. We wanted to provide some track and sustainability to the studio. I think it's no secret that you see a lot of studio closures. We have a responsibility to our team to make sure that we let's take care of them. We'll be stepping up aggressively. We're a small team and we're actively recruiting."

Marquee team and investors

I don't know what's going on in this RPG, but it's all on deck.

The studio has also added several top industry veterans to its advisory team, including former Microsoft Chairman John W. Thompson, former Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton, former Tencent Chairman Ben Feder, and Nintendo Family No. 10 Yamauchi.

Other investors include Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell, Valorant co-creator Stephen "Slim" Lim, Guild Wars co-creator Jeff Strain, World of Warcraft executive Seth Sivak, former COO of TikTok V. Pappas, CTO of Bandai Namco Julien Merceron and Craig Kallman, CEO of Atlantic Records.

“I think the game we make is about bringing together different talents to create magic,” said Chris Bell. “The union we have set up reflects this. It has been very, very rewarding and exciting to bring in some amazing partners to help us develop the vision for Gardens."

Origins

The team includes industry veterans from games like Sky: Children of the Light, Journey, What Remains of Edith Finch, Blaseball, Ultima Online, Outer Wilds, Tunic, Dustforce, and Ashen, and movies like as The Hobbit and The Adventures of Tintin.

"It's a game...