Meet the Team Behind Paradise Tycoon — part 1: Empires Not Vampires

With new progress updates coming out, it is about time we reveal our company track record and who are the people behind Paradise Tycoon in a series of Meet the Team Medium articles.

The front cover of Finnish Games Industry report by Neogames 2020 showcasing some of the most famous Finnish Game IPs

Finland is not only known for being the Happiest Country In The World, for its saunas, Santa Claus and Nokia, but also for the thriving games industry generating $3 bn revenue a year with the likes of Rovio (Angry Birds), Supercell (Clash of Clans), Remedy (Max Payne), Fingersoft (Hill Climb Racing) and Small Giant Games (Puzzles & Empires) leading the way.

Empires Not Vampires Ltd., a team with over 70 years of experience in the gaming industry was founded in 2017 on that very same bedrock as its super successful predecessors. The company led by CEO Harri Karppinen (linkedin) and COO Timo Juuti (linkedin) had a mission to create a games studio to combine the creative workflow with modern, data-driven methods for developing process and user acquisition.

Tropic Empire was the first game published by Empires Not Vampires. The game featuring Tycoon style gameplay was discontinued in 2021 and is no longer available.

Since then Empires has developed and published several games such as Tropic Empire, MIXMSTR (published under Youth Control Games subdivision), Garage Empire (Fingersoft collaboration, available on Google Play) and Iffy’s Idle Tropic Adventure (available on Google Play) while working with other games companies and publishers such as Nitro Games, and Amanotes.

MIXMSTR DJ game combined strategic collectible card game and rhythm game mechanics in a story driven DJ universe featuring real artists and clubbing brands.

MIXMSTR alone amassed over 1.3 million players, got great reviews with 4.9 / 5 rating on App Store and reached the top-10 of most downloaded music games in over 60 countries. With MIXMSTR the team got to work with some of the biggest and best dance music brands and artists in the world, including BMG, the legendary Defected Records and Grammy-nominated artist Camelphat.

Garage Empire a collaboration with Fingersoft introduced a unique hybrid of racing and tycoon game. Available to download on Google Play

The next game Empires published was Garage Empire, a hybrid tycoon meets racing game. With Garage Empires we partnered with Fingersoft, a Finnish mobile games developer known from the Hill Climb Racing game franchise with over 2 BILLION downloads. Garage Empire was featured on the front page of Google Play once released.

The latest game title the team published was Iffy’s Idle Tropic Adventure. The story-driven adventure game with idle tycoon elements achieved staggering KPIs, including 10 % paying user conversion and 55 % day 1 retention — numbers considered way above the average even when compared to successful mobile games.

Empires returned to the Tropical theme with Iffy’s Tropic Adventure

Beta version of Iffy’s Tropical Adventure is still available, however, the development was discontinued for no lesser reason than the company’s decision to fully focus on Paradise Tycoon.

“It was a perfect time for us to pivot into Blockchain games. The years of working together as a team refined our development workflow to a very efficient combination of data driven and creative process, something that we can take into blockchain games with high confidence” — Timo Juuti, Co-Founder

In the next part of Meet the Team we’ve selected to introduce the four executives you’ll see bouncing around in AMAs, community chats, and on social media.

Now that you know the company, don’t be a stranger to join our Discord or Telegram groups.

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