Scottish games studio Ant Workshop has secured funding to enable the development of new titles, including one it hopes to bring to market next year.

Chroma Ventures, the investment arm of Dundee-based 4J Studios, invested a seven-figure sum in the games firm, allowing it to “devote more time and resource” to developing Dungeon Golf, a concept the team recently created.

The studio also plans to employ two full-time staff members, as well as additional freelance talent to supplement an existing team of eight developers.

The investment also will see its principals, 4J Studios founders Paddy Burns and Chris van der Kuyl, join Ant Workshop’s board as directors.

Edinburgh-based Ant Workshop was founded in 2015 by Tony Gowland, who has extensive experience in the gaming industry. The vision for the studio, he said, was to focus on developing original intellectual property with a “quirky sense of humour”.

Commenting on the news, Gowland said: “I’m incredibly excited for the future and what Ant Workshop will be able to achieve with Chroma Ventures’ investment.

“It not only allows our team to focus exclusively on making our new IP and games the very best they can be but enables us to tap into the vast experience Chris and Paddy bring, both in terms of developing games and businesses.

“The idea for Dungeon Golf stemmed from a family holiday and watching my six-year-old daughter playing mini-golf with my mum. It struck me that a game like that is a great leveller in that everyone understands the basic concept and regardless of age or ability you can all have fun playing together.”

The Scottish games studio received a grant from the UK Games Fund last year to develop a prototype of Dungeon Golf, in which minotaurs, goblins, and other mythical creatures compete with one another.

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Gowland continued: “We then started to imagine how some of the classic characters found in dungeon crawler games would perform on a golf course and quickly realised we could have a lot of fun mashing the two worlds together.

“If a game is designed well and genuinely family-friendly, there’s no reason it can’t bridge the generations and bring people together in a way that is fun and appealing for all.

“If we get this right, I’d love to develop a series with different variations on the theme over the next few years.”

Van der Kuyl, principal of Chroma Ventures, said: “Tony is an experienced and highly talented designer who has gathered an exceptional team around him to deliver great content across multiple platforms.

“We love their work and the quirky sense of humour that runs through the games they develop. They make games most parents would be happy for their kids to play and that they could find themselves drawn into quite quickly too.

“Having a brilliant concept for a game is just the start. Studios need time and space to focus fully on developing those unique ideas and making them the best they can be. We hope this investment will allow Tony and his team to concentrate on this project and we can’t wait to watch it take shape.”

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