Kobojo and Gumi founders form new mobile studio Mana Cube

A new mobile developer has opened doors in Paris, co-founded by the minds behind other successful mobile firms.

Mana Cube has been formed by Philippe Desgranges and Nicolas Godement-Berline, and aims to “create a household name for adventure games on mobile”.

Desgranges is best known as one of the co-founders of Parisian gaming start-up Kobojo, which has raised $15m in funding and focuses on midcore games. Godement-Berline, meanwhile, was founder of Gumi Europe and oversaw the release of Japanese mobile hit Brave Frontier in the West. 

They take up the roles of CEO and COO respectively.

“With Mana Cube, our focus will be on delivering great games with outstanding service,” said Godement-Berline. “CRM is a major focus for us. We’re building our own tools to better use every customer touch point as a cool opportunity to build rapport. 

“We’d love to reinvest more profits into serving an amazing experience to our existing player base than engaging in the self-destructive LTV arbitrage user acquisition race currently going on.”

The studio’s first game will be Dungeon Monsters, a first-person dungeon crawler designed specifically for smartphones. Mana Cube promises one-handed portrait orientation, short pick-up-and-play sessions and a “vast, deep retention metagame”. It is due for release in Q1 2016.

Desgranges added: “We believe everybody wants to have an adventure. This simple, powerful claim is what Mana Cube is about: a little bit of magic that you can take anywhere with you.

“On mobile, there are significant, successful RPGs that were all made in Asia. We love those games, but there’s demand for something different with a Western look and feel. We’ve identified a gap in the market that we’d like to fill.”