Wild Needle secures $2.5M for next-gen gaming

"Super sneaky stealth" social mobile gaming startup (tongue twister?) raises Series A from Shasta

Stealth social mobile gaming startup Wild Needle has raised $2.5 million of a $3 million Series A round, according to an SEC Form D filing from over two weeks ago.

Persons involved in the deal, according to the form, are Playdom co-founder and chairman Rick Thompson (listed as an executive); Heidi Carson, VP of Platform Solutions for Adify (also listed as an executive; and Shasta Ventures co-founder Robert T. Coneybeer.

The first two names confirm half the information on Wild Needle’s site that says its team is composed of people from Playdom, Microsoft, PayPal, and Adify. (Disney purchased Playdom in late July for $563.2 million up-front and a $200 million earn-out.)

While Shasta is assuredly the leader in this round, it’s unclear at this point whether the VC firm is the sole investor. The last few startups we covered with fundraisers from Shasta include gift card marketplace Plastic Jungle, video site Movieclips.com and cloud-based subscription billing platform Zuora.

Because the Mountain View, Calif.-based company is still in “super sneaky stealth mode,” the only thing we get right now is an epic-sounding, highly suggestive message on their main site:

We're working on some great ideas for the next generation of social games for mobile devices. After all, a mobile device is so much more than a portable game player. What if mobile games were thoughtful, immersive, and filled with unexpected delight? What if they made you laugh out loud?

Of course, those are precisely the things we expect the next-generation of truly mobile, truly social games to accomplish. We’ll see next year if they have what it takes to stand out in this increasingly crowded space.