Bossa nets $1.35 million for Worlds Adrift

Worlds Adrift has landed some support, as London Venture Partners is investing $1.35 million into developer Bossa Studios, according to a VentureBeat report.

London Venture Partners hopes Bossa will be its next big success story. The venture capital firm has provided investment for studios like Supercell and Natural Motion in the past, and counts Unity, Boomlagoon, and Winko Games among its current portfolio.

Worlds Adrift is a departure for a studio already known for its departures. Bossa began as a Facebook game developer in 2010, but moved to PCs and consoles with the physics-based absurdities of Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread. Last year the company was one of the first on board with Apple Watch, producing Spy_Watch for the tech giant's foray into wearables. Contrast that with Worlds Adrift, a physics-based sandbox MMO where grappling hook-equipped players explore a persistent shared universe aboard makeshift airships of their own construction.

As Bossa CEO and co-founder Henrique Olifiers said, "It's a universe that responds to every possibility engineered by a player: if they can think of it, it should be possible. This creates the 'emergent gameplay' design philosophy that Bossa Studios is spearheading. Think of it as the difference between a scripted TV show where once you've watched an episode and know what's happened, there's little point in watching it again; versus an improv stage where the same scenario can lead to an infinite number of unexpected interactions due to actors empowered with full freedom each time. This is what Worlds Adrift creates."

To realize its ambition, Bossa is basing Worlds Adrift on Improbable's simulation technology. Improbable received its own injection of capital last year when Andreessen Horowitz invested $20 million into the company.