With our 17th investment, we’re stepping into gaming.
Every now and then, we meet teams that push us to look beyond sectors. We don’t invest in categories alone; we invest in teams whose vision we believe in. Gaming has not traditionally been at the core of our investment thesis. But sometimes, the team itself, the way they approach problems, how they build, and how quickly they learn, becomes more important than the sector. Surge Games was exactly that kind of team for us.
Surge Games is an Istanbul-based game studio developing hybrid-casual puzzle games with an AI-powered production infrastructure. The team analyzes the behavioral mechanics behind successful puzzle games to design original mechanics that feel intuitive to players from their very first session.
When we first met Onur Uras, Muhammed Atlam, Rabia Konuk Uras, and Yiğit Neğiş, what stood out was not only the depth of their individual experience, but how complementary they were as a founding team. In gaming, success is often less about finding a single winning idea and more about building a system that helps you get to the right idea faster. Surge uses AI not just for content creation, but throughout the entire production process, allowing the team to test more ideas, learn from the results, and iterate faster, all with a lean team.
Behind this production model is a highly complementary founding team. The four founders bring deep experience across product development, data, growth, and creative production, along with years of working together. What we saw was not simply a group of strong individuals, but a team that already knows how to build together. At the early stage, we believe this can be just as important as the technology itself.
We see the same mindset in Surge’s approach to product. Rather than simply replicating existing game mechanics, the team focuses on understanding player behavior, questioning why certain mechanics work, and developing their own interpretations from those insights. We believe this approach can be an important foundation for building products that last.
For us, investing in Surge Games is therefore about more than investing in a gaming company. It reflects our belief that a new generation of teams can build differentiated production models in an industry where Türkiye has already proven itself on the global stage. We’re excited to be part of what comes next.
Welcome to the Simya VC portfolio, Surge Games! 
Zeynep Şener, Simya VC
