Gardens Interactive just banked another $35M+ in Series B cash, pushing its war chest past $70M for a still-unreleased "strandbox" fantasy game. Lightspeed led the round with Sequoia, Index, Accel, Innovation Endeavors, the Nintendo family office, and names like Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield and OpenAI Sora co-creator Thomas Dimson tagging along.

The LA studio, founded by veterans from Journey, What Remains of Edith Finch, and Sky: Children of the Light, calls the project a shared fantasy adventure built on social roleplay where one player's footprints literally linger for the next wanderer. CEO Stephen Bell framed it as giving players tools to become the engines of each other's stories in a shapeshifting world. The money is earmarked for launch and post-launch live ops, with the team of roughly 30-42 distributed across the US, Malaysia, and France.

At a $190M pre-money valuation this early, the bet is on prestige social entertainment over automation hype. Pre-alpha sign-ups are already open, but platforms and a firm date remain under wraps. The bar just moved for what counts as a serious player-driven world.