Mobile studio FunCraft nets $1.8 million to push into casual market

FunCraft, a mobile studio established last year by a group of former Zynga, Juicebox Games, and EA staffers, has secured $1.8 million in funding to create "casual forever" games. 

As reported by VentureBeat, the investment was led by Play Ventures and will enable the San Francisco-based studio to create casual titles in the same vein as Candy Crush and Zynga Poker. 

The company believes that by tapping into a new casual sub-genre it'll be able to stand apart from big-name competitors like King and Zynga.

"The games we're making are distinct from hypercasual and the match 3 puzzle giants," said FunCraft co-founder Michael Martinez.

"We want to create a new genre of casual games based on challenging yet satisfying gameplay, and are building underlying systems to be shared across all our games -- that bring them alive with progression, live events, and social interaction."