Demonstrating there's still plenty of appetite in the investment community for social mobile games, US start up Bionic Panda has announced it's closed its seed funding round.

A syndicate of investors including SoftTech VC, Norwest Venture Partners, Google Ventures, 500 Startups and angels Craig Sherman and Kal Vepuri were involved.

The amount of the investment wasn't disclosed.

Hit the ground running

One reason for the interest is its debut game Aqua Pets, which the company says has had over 3 million downloads on Android, and is a top 100 grossing game.

Bionic Panda describes itself as an Android-focused mobile social company, based in San Francisco.

Another reason is the background of the two founders, CEO Charles Hudson and CTO Mike Jimenez, who most recently worked together at Serious Business. The company was acquired by Zynga in February 2010, mainly for its Facebook game Friends for Sale.

Catching big fish

Also a venture partner at SoftTech VC, Hudson has previously worked at Google, Gaia Online, and In-Q-Tel and set up the Social Gaming Summit events. Jimenez had stints at Cybersource Corporation and BitTorrent.

"There is a tremendous opportunity to build original casual mobile social games on the Android platform. Its open nature makes it the perfect environment in which to experiment with new game concepts and engagement models," commented Hudson.

"Bionic Panda is an early leader on the Android platform and we are excited to work with their team as they pursue their passion for developing the next generation of casual mobile social games," added Joe Kraus, partner, Google Ventures.

You can see how Aqua Pets plays in the following video.