Considering Slightly Mad Studios built its reputation from high end racing simulators - most recently EA's Need for Speed SHIFT, and before that many of its staff worked at Blimey! Games and SimBin - its move to casual games is something of a surprise.

But that's the news from Ian Bell and Andy Garton, Slightly Mad's co-founders, who have now formed Gamagio, which has over 50 staff working on multiple titles.

"Gamagio is creating new gaming experiences, new ways to play and interact, and we see social and mobile gaming as key to that," said Bell.

Something lighter

The company will focus on mobile and browser-based games including Facebook. Its high performance, cross platform engine supporting iOS and Android devices is already being used in the production of several titles.

In addition, Andy Garton added: "Our class-leading social gaming engine has been built from the ground up to support the leading edge HTML5 technology, which is central to the ever changing social and mobile gaming landscape, as well as plug-in free 3D graphics standards such as WebGL."

The first releases from Gamagio are due in the summer.