'Timeline Dungeon' developer NOVN have announced that they recently received $500k USD from NC Soft. As NC Soft expands its business interest from game and contents to a range of other entertainment areas, this investment will enable NOVN to release Timeline Dungeon in January 2015. This investment follows up a seed round of funding from ‘The Ventures’.
NOVN's Timeline Dungeon plans to open a new genre with their first title. It is similar to an RPG, as players explore new worlds, meet companions, and cooperate or compete with other players to fight monsters. But instead of seeing characters, you see a forum screen that is similar to 'twitter.' You will not be controlling your character like in other games, but rather the action goes on in a timeline format. This special characteristic allows other consoles with smaller screens to easily enjoy the game and puts emphasis on the game’s storyline. This direction of well-developed storyline and interaction between players is aimed particularly at North American gamers.
NOVN is well known for it collaboration between ex-Nexon and Devsisters employee, Young-guh Jo NOVN’s CEO, ex-Daum Dong-hyun Kim CCO (Chief Creative Officer), and ex-Neople, Vanilla Breeze Young-wook Oh CTO who is also the writer of 'History of Korean Game'. These distinguished members of Korea's game development community have a very high level of experience and style as well as a deep understanding of user traits.
Young-guh Jo has already reached 4th place in the North America's RPG market by single handedly producing 'RPG Snake' in 2010, very rapidly after the iPhone entered Korea. Dong-hyun Kim was the center of discussion when he made text-based game 'Cursed Cube' and Young-woo Oh CTO is known for game development and also as a game columnist.
CEO Jo believes this investment helped the team to better prepare their international service and it is meaningful to not only make a deal with an experienced global venture 'TheVentures', but also to do so with NC Soft, one of world’s top game developers.
NC Soft is currently looking for mobile companies with great insight and technology and through investments like this, they are trying to actively expand the network to compete in the new mobile landscape.
Currently NOVN is planning to launch 'Timeline Dungeon' only in Korea for the first quarter of 2015 and will release in North America soon after.
