Rage of Bahamut developer invests $680K in Japanese indie game Airship Q

Japanese game Airship Q is like Minecraft and Terraria, but you play as a cat … that’s digital gold, and you can see why a savvy company would want to invest in that.

That’s exactly what Rage of Bahamut developer Cygames did. The company revealed over the weekend that it invested around $680,000 (70 million yen) in Airship Q developer Miracle Positive, as first spotted by Siliconera.

Airship Q is an open-world sandbox game that has players controlling a cat that was once human. Gamers must craft and build an airship, fight other airships, and find a magical empress that can return the cat to its human form. It feature action role-playing elements and looks visually similar to Terraria.

Miracle Positive plans to release the game on PlayStation Vita in Japan. We’ve reached out to the company to ask about the possibility of a Western release and how it plans to use its influx of cash.

http://youtu.be/Ss-VLhoj4lM

In 2013, Miracle Positive put Airship Q up for crowdfunding on a Japanese Kickstarter-like site known as Makuake. The studio only asked for $5,000, but backers ended up pledging over $12,000. Now, with Cygame’s investment, the developer has several times that amount of cash to work with.

Airship Q is due out this year.

Cygames’ Rage of Bahamut was one of the highest-grossing mobile games on iOS and Android in 2013. Due to its success, Japanese mobile publisher DeNA swooped in and picked up a 20 percent interest in Cygames and released Rage of Bahamut under its Mobage label.

We’ve reached out to Cygames to ask about the terms of the investment.