Finnish developer Seriously has scaled up its ambition with an $18 million Series A funding round.

This brings its total funding to $28 million.

The round was lead by Northzone, which has previously invested in Finnish developers Boomlagoon and Playraven and UK dev Space Ape, with Korea Investment Partners also participating, as did previous investors Upfront Ventures, Sunstone Capital and Daher Capital.

The cash will be used to build out Seriously's production teams and boost its marketing activities as it expands its debut franchise Best Fiends beyond mobile gaming and into global entertainment.

Match-that

To-date the match-3 game has been downloaded over 15 million times with up to 1.35 million daily active players.

Seriously will release the second game in the planned trilogy later in 2015.

Seriously is reverse engineering the typical Hollywood approach to create an entertainment franchise with Nordic gaming at the heart of it," said Bjorn Stray, Partner at Northzone.

"We have been impressed by Seriously's growth and team they have built in Los Angeles and Helsinki, and see extraordinary potential for disruption in the market."