nDreams, creators of The Assembly and publishers of the upcoming brawler Bloody Zombies, have completed an additional £2 million investment with Mercia Technologies, and £700,000 from private investors to create more VR games. In addition, nDreams has signed a deal to bring exclusive new content to a “leading VR arcade company.” According to a nDreams blog post, the VR arcade content partnership is just one of many recent deals with third-party companies.
nDreams says they’re “targeting rapid growth over the next year as the VR market continues to expand,” citing its five VR titles in production including Bloody Zombies and and number of unannounced titles currently in development.
Paul Fitzsimons, a former partner at venture capital firm Apax Partners, will join nDreams as chairman. Rob Precious, the former director of business development at Geomerics/ARM, has also joined the company’s board as non-executive director. nDreams also plans on strengthening their senior team by hiring a CFO and a COO in the coming months.
“Mercia’s continued support, and the backing of private investors, bolsters our relentless ambition to remain at the forefront of VR. The company has expanded rapidly over the past 12 months leading to outstanding opportunities, including our move into VR Arcades and our continued focus on creating innovative VR content for home headsets. We’re also delighted to welcome Paul and Rob to the board, who bring a wealth of experience and insight to the team,” said Patrick O’Luanaigh, CEO and founder of nDreams.
Mercia previously invested seed funds amounting to $2.75M in December 2015. Combined with the recent £2.7M ($3.5M) follow-on investment, this brings nDreams to $9.22M over the course of three funding rounds, according to Crunchbase.
“nDreams continues to thrive within the VR market, a sector expected to be worth in excess of $30 billion by 2020,” says Mike Hayes, investment director at Mercia. “Its growing reputation as one of the UK’s leading developers and publishers of VR content demonstrates the significant progress that the company has made this year with many of the major hardware brands in this rapidly growing market. We are delighted to continue to back this industry-leading team.”
The company’s latest title, Bloody Zombies, is slated to arrive later this year on PS4, PC, Xbox One, PS VR, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive.
