Gendai Games raises $1M in first round for game creation tools

Gendai Games, a startup with a game creation tool for the iPhone, has raised over $1 million in a first round of funding.

Techcrunch reported that the round was led by DFJ Mercury with participation from Steamboat Ventures, DFJ Frontier, and ff Asset Management. Angel investors include Paul Bricault, Paige Craig, Tom McInerney, Josh Resnick and and Mark Suster.

Gendai makes GameSalad, which lets non-programmers easily build and publish two-dimensional casual games on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. It has been downloaded more than 70,000 times in nine months, and there are now more than 800 games in the App Store built with Gendai’s tools. The company’s simple approach contrasts with the much larger 3D graphics game creation tools from Unity Technologies. It isn’t a lot of money to raise, but it shows that investors are starting to pay more attention to the promising mobile games market.