Supercell's Puzzling Gamble, Scopely’s War on Clones, and the Royal Kingdom Problem

Turkish puzzle founders are closing rounds regardless of where they're based. Supercell is betting on a new puzzle title. Scopely is using its new IP to send warning shots to the clone market.

And Royal Kingdom crossed $300M in 2025, but may be quietly eating its own portfolio. All of the above and more were covered in the Deconstructor of Fun’s Puzzle Monthly.   Vento Games, based in Istanbul, closed a $4M seed round led by Makers Fund and Arcadia.

5M pre-seed round , again led by Makers Fund. Most of their founders come from Applovin’s Lion Studios, where they shipped HexaSort, a hybrid casual puzzle that crossed $50M in IAP revenue. Makers Fund was the original early-stage investor in Dream Games, which exited for $5B last year.

Arguably, the fund knows what outstanding looks like from early on.   Turkish developers and their games (most of which are puzzles) continue to grow in an increasingly contracting market. Turkish puzzle studios have spent the last decade building some of the most downloaded Casual and hybrid casual puzzle games in the world.

Focusing on a specific genre has created a talent pool, and that talent pool is now spilling across borders. Istanbul, Barcelona, London… Wherever experienced Turkish operators land, VCs seem to follow, and for a good reason. From Time Blast to Super Work for Hire  Time Blast launched in 2024.

It was one of the most visually refined Blast games ever made. It also failed because the Blast market had been closed for three years before it arrived. While the puzzle market grew through legacy subgenres like Match-3 and Merge and evolved with newer ones like Match 3D and Sort, Blast failed to keep pace.

The most recent Blast game to cross $40M in lifetime revenue was Penny & Flo, which launched in 2020. The market took a nosedive from the beginning of 2021 and never fully recovered since. Playabit, the studio behind arguably the best Blast game that didn’t make it, is now building a Match-3 for Supercell: Hay Day Match .

This is Supercell's second Hay Day puzzle attempt, following Hay Day Pop , which had strong polish and a weak meta. Hay Day Match is entering the Match-3 category, where user acquisition costs reaching above $30 per user in the US create a super high barrier to enter. It’s the same category where the most innovative recent entrant, Match Villains, is still struggling to convert differentiation into revenue.

More than anything, this looks like an IP play. Supercell is betting that the vast audience who played Hay Day will convert into Hay Day Match players at lower CPIs. There is precedent for IP-led games working in adjacent genres; Monopoly Go and Disney Solitaire both found real audiences.