The way people discover games is broken. App stores rely on rankings and paid placements, while players spend most of their time inside algorithmic feeds on social platforms. Hamburg-based Minit Games is addressing this gap directly, building an open platform for short-form gaming where games are discovered and played the same way people consume short videos today. The startup just closed a pre-seed round to make that platform real, and the investors behind it signal serious intent.
Minit Games has emerged from stealth mode with a pre-seed funding round of €1.7 million, roughly $2 million, led by LVP and the Sony Innovation Fund, with participation from industry angels including Stefan Klemm, Timo Soininen, and Klaas Kersting. The funding will go toward team expansion and accelerating the technical rollout of the platform ahead of an invite-only alpha launch.
The Problem They Are Solving:
Game discovery has not kept pace with how people consume content. Social feeds deliver video, music, and news in seconds, but finding and playing a new game still means visiting a store, reading reviews, downloading an app, and waiting. Most players drop off somewhere in that chain.
Minit Games delivers a personalized stream of bite-sized HTML5 titles that load immediately, aiming to remove the friction between discovery and gameplay. The games are available on iOS, Android, the web, and through embedded play in supported messaging platforms like Discord and Telegram. No downloads required.
How the AI Discovery Engine Works:
The core of Minit’s platform is its recommendation system. An AI-driven discovery engine analyzes real-time user signals and engagement patterns, matching creator content with the right audience. This is the same logic behind short-video recommendations, applied specifically to interactive content.
Discovery is driven by a recommendation engine inside the mobile app, surfacing titles in a social-style feed based on user interactions. For developers, this creates a distribution path that does not depend on app store optimization, paid installs, or influencer partnerships. The platform matches the game to the player automatically.
An Open Layer for Game Developers:
Minit Games is not just a consumer product. It also functions as a publishing platform. Developers can use any professional engine or AI tool to build, with no SDK needed. If a game is HTML5 compatible, it qualifies as a Minit.
The Creator Fund rewards games that players engage with, discuss, and share, creating a direct link between player attention and creator income. For indie developers and studios experimenting with AI-assisted game creation, this lowers the barrier to building and distributing short-form interactive experiences significantly.
Team Behind Minit:
The Hamburg-based team is led by co-founders Ole Schaper and Mark Buchholz, both former executives at Sviper, The Sandbox, and Kyna Games. Both founders have hands-on experience across mobile gaming, studio operations, and game distribution. That background matters when building infrastructure-level products where execution complexity is high.
LVP General Partner Are Mack Growen described Minit Games as solving the discoverability crisis by meeting players exactly where they spend their time: in the feed. Sony Innovation Fund, Managing Director Sony Ventures-EMEA, Antonio Avitabile pointed to feed-native, instant-access content as a global trend that has reached a turning point in gaming.
The Broader Market Context:
In the broader European gaming and interactive content ecosystem in 2025 and 2026, several startups have attracted early-stage funding highlighting investor interest in game discovery and platform innovation, with €12 million in total funding circulating within the sector. Minit Games is one part of a visible pattern: investors are backing platforms that rethink how games reach players, not just how they are built.
The short-form gaming space has seen attempts before. Supercell-backed HypeHype has been in soft launch for several years, and Smirk emerged as a contender in late 2024. Minit’s approach with HTML5 instant play, AI-driven feed ranking, and an open publishing model gives it a distinct set of tools compared to earlier entrants in this space.
What’s Next:
If you are building short-form games, AI-assisted interactive content, or tools for indie developers, Minit Games represents a meaningful new distribution channel to watch closely. The alpha launch is invite-only, so registering early on the platform is the practical first step for developers looking to test reach.
For founders in adjacent categories like game monetization, creator tools, or mobile publishing, the AI-powered gaming feed model is worth studying. The underlying mechanic, using real-time engagement data to match content to audience without paid installs, applies well beyond gaming. Minit Games is building one version of it for short-form interactive entertainment, and the investor lineup behind it shows the approach has strong backing.
