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AMSTERDAM, March 14th 2019 – Today CoolGames announced that it has enforced its leadership team by two additions. Jop Pollmann has been appointed as Executive Chairman, joining Founder and CEO Laurens Rutten in the day-to-day management of the company. Additionally Mark Overmars became Chairman of the CoolGames Supervisory Board.

Jop is an angel investor in CoolGames from the start and acted as its first Chairman. He has a background in law, marketing information, media and fashion in the roles of CEO as well as COO. Over the past 15 years, Jop kept executive roles in private-equity backed companies, realised growth, exits, successful, turn-arounds and reorganizations.

Mark Overmars has a long standing career in the games industry. He played a key role in the Dutch game education and game research and is the original creator of Game Maker, one of the most popular development tools for 2D games. In 2011 he was named one the 50 most influencial game developers in the world by the GameDeveloper magazine. He was also one of the founders of Tingly Games that in 2016 merged with CoolGames.

AMSTERDAM/TOKYO, June 28, 2018 – Today, LINE Corporation, the leading messaging app in Japan, announced its upcoming LINE QUICK GAME service. With LINE QUICK GAME, LINE users can play games instantly from within the LINE messaging app, without the requirement to download the game first from a traditional app store.

As its first title for LINE QUICK GAME, CoolGames has developed a customized Sudoku game, based on its existing Daily Sudoku that has been successfully published on many other platforms before. With the game, users can unlock a series of new Sudoku’s every day, while gradually improving their experience and ranking on LINE leaderboards. The game also features several popular LINE characters, including Brown, Cony and Sally.

“We are excited to bring a version of one of our most popular games to this new platform”, says Laurens Rutten, Founder and CEO. “With our focus on high quality games for messaging platforms, it’s great that we can now also offer great game experiences to the millions of daily users of LINE.” LINE QUICK GAME will be opened up to game players in the summer of 2018.

AMSTERDAM, May 8 2018 – Today CoolGames and Rovio Entertainment have globally released Angry Birds for Instant Games by Facebook. It is the first time players get to enjoy the slingshot experience in Facebook Messenger with their friends, as multiplayer edition of the world famous Angry Birds Classic game arrives to Messenger.

“It has been a unique experience for us to work on this famous title together with Rovio” says Laurens Rutten, Founder and CEO of CoolGames. “The first multiplayer version of Angry Birds Classic to this new games platform, while pushing the HTML5 technology to provide a game experience one would expect from native apps.”

As Instant Games is based on HTML5 technology, Messenger users can instantly share and play against friends without the need to install a game first. The game brings various game-modes and different levels and will be updated with many new social features in the upcoming months.

’We are excited to launch Angry Birds for Messenger‘’ noted Heini Kaihu, Head of Puzzle studio at Rovio ‘”Angry Birds for Messenger, featuring asynchronous multiplayer, is a brand new take on one of the most successful and loved mobile games of all time. Expanding Angry Birds to Facebook Messenger is the next step of introducing Angry Birds to millions of new fans.”

CoolGames was global launch partner for Facebook Instant Games in November 2016 and has released many successful games for this platform since.

• Play Angry Birds on Instant Games here
• A gallery of game images and screenshots can be found here
• Watch the game trailer of Angry Birds for Instant Games here

AMSTERDAM, 7 December 2017 – Today CoolGames and Rovio announced Angry Birds for Facebook Messenger, as part of the One Year Anniversary of Instant Games. The game is currently in the final development stage for its first release and will be officially rolled-out to the full Messenger user base in early 2018.

CoolGames was a global launch partner for Facebook Instant Games in November 2016 with the release of Arkanoid, in partnership with Taito. As Instant Games is based on HTML5 technology, Messenger users can easily play against friends without the need to download a game first.

Since its original launch one year ago, Facebook has significantly enhanced the platform with many new features and additional games. Around 75 games, of which six titles were published by CoolGames, have become available on Instant Games thus far.

Read the full Facebook developers update on the One Year Anniversary here.

AMSTERDAM, November 16, 2017 – Today, CoolGames released Hasbro’s Battleship for Instant Games, the new games platform of Facebook Messenger. More than 1.3 billion Messenger users can now challenge each other and instantly play this game against friends on their mobile phone.

Hasbro’s classic board game edition was first released in 1967 and millions of copies have been sold since. Hasbro Inc. is still selling Battleship in over 50 countries worldwide today.

Laurens Rutten, Founder and CEO of CoolGames: “We’re excited that we could bring this iconic game, in close collaboration with Hasbro, to the largest social network in the world. Enhanced by the many social and rich gameplay features that Facebook Instant Games offers, millions of new users can now experience Battleship on their smartphones.”

“CoolGames successfully adapted Battleship to fit messenger platforms, while maintaining the core gameplay and fun play experience from Hasbro’s Battleship Game”, said Richard Cleveland, VP Hasbro Digital Gaming. “We are thrilled to be able to provide consumers new and unique ways to enjoy this classic family favourite.”

Battleship for Facebook Messenger is a turn-based multiplayer game, where users can engage in many battles against several friends. And through CoolGames’ matchmaking system, it also provides the opportunity to challenge random players who are not your Facebook contacts. Special power-ups such as the Air Raid can be unlocked to help sink your opponent’s ships.

Battleship for Instant Games is developed by CoolGames’ in-house studio and is based on HTML5 technology. CoolGames was a launch-partner for Facebook Instant Games in November 2016. Other successful titles that were released on Messenger include Arkanoid, Snake and Jewel Academy. CoolGames plans to launch several new AAA titles for Instant Games in the coming months.

➔ Play Battleship on Instant Games here
➔ A gallery of game images and screenshots can be found here
➔ Watch the game trailer of Battleship for Instant Games here

PR Week has awarded One Green Bean & HMD Global /Nokia for its wildly successful relaunch of Nokia Snake on Facebook Messenger, in the category of “Best Use of New Technology”. The iconic Snake game for Facebook Instant Games was developed by CoolGames on behalf of HMD Global, the home of Nokia phones, as part of a marketing campaign for a new series of Nokia smartphones. The campaign became an overwhelming success, with over 3 million plays achieved on the first day alone and 32 million Snake gameplays in the six weeks following the launch. CoolGames is proud of having contributed to this success and congratulates our partners HMD and One Green Bean for making this possible. Read more about the campaign here https://lnkd.in/gQjF6ND

Amsterdam, October 11th, 2017. Ard Bonewald, CoolGames’ Head of Studio, was interviewed for PocketGamer.biz about his life-long career in the games industry. He started his journey as a Game Designer for arcade games publisher Davilex. Today, almost twenty years later, Ard is responsible for the day-to-day management of the CoolGames in-house Studio. Main focus now is developing high quality AAA games for messaging platforms like Facebook Instant Games.

His principal piece of advice for young talents seeking a career in games: “Try to be humble and seek self improvement. I didn’t see it then, but I now know that I have learned the most valuable lessons from the times, and the people, that were hardest on me.”

Read the full interview here.

AMSTERDAM, February 27, 2017 – Snake, the iconic game from Nokia, has now resurfaced on Instant Games by Facebook. Snake for Instant Games was developed by CoolGames on behalf of HMD Global, the home of Nokia phones, as part of the launch of a series of Nokia smartphones.

Snake first featured on Nokia handsets in the late 90s and since then has appeared on over 400 million phones. Laurens Rutten, Founder and CEO of CoolGames, said: “It was a big honour that our Studio could contribute to the new release of such an iconic IP. Snake was without a doubt the very first mobile games experience for a whole generation.”

In line with the original game, players will move the snake around the screen, eating apples and bugs along the way to score points. The more the snake eats, the longer it grows, making it a challenge to control. And benefiting from the Facebook Messenger sharing features, friends can see who has the highest score on the leaderboard, adding an element of friendly competition.

Instant Games was released on November 29th and lets people play games within seconds on Messenger and Facebook News Feed. The games are all built in HTML5 technology and can be played instantly across mobile devices (iOS and Android) and desktop. CoolGames was one of Facebook’s global launch partners with the development of Arkanoid on behalf of owner Taito. In the first two weeks after launch, millions of people across thirty countries have already been playing on Instant Games.