UK hypercasual publisher Kwalee has acquired French narrative mobile game developer Tictales for an undisclosed amount.

Founded in 2015, Tictales specialises in the development of free-to-play romance narrative games. To date, Tictales has released 14 titles, including Summer Trip, Fictions, and Perfume of Love, which have accumulated over 6 million downloads.

The acquisition of Tictales is the first from Kwalee since its founding in 2011. The firm recently expanded its operations in Bangalore and expects to double its headcount within the next year.

Following the acquisition, Tictales will continue to operate independently and will gain access to Kwalee’s marketing capabilities.

Prime acquisition

"We have been committed since day one to creating amazing mobile fiction for our audience and I’m very proud of all the team members of Tictales for this milestone," said Tictales co-founder and sales manager Christophe Chocho.

"The long-term vision of Tictales is to bring bigger franchises to the world, with our production capacity increasing and new talents joining our team. We and Kwalee share the same philosophy about high-quality games and we cannot wait to show our exciting new projects to the world."

Kwalee CEO David Darling added: "It’s a proud moment for us to make Kwalee’s first acquisition, and Tictales is the perfect partner. With their successful track record of casual mobile games and ability to tell a compelling story through their games, their ambitions match our own and we’re looking forward to building collective success."

As the hypercasual game sector continues to grow, the latest to join the craze is Sonic the Hedgehog co-creator, Yuji Naka, who released the independently developed Shot2048 in December 2021 following his departure from Square Enix.