Digital Chocolate Buys Cake Mania Dev Sandlot Games

Tower Bloxx developer Digital Chocolate this week announced the acquisition of Bothell, WA-based web and mobile developer Sandlot Games, makers of Cake Mania and Super Granny. The acquisition of Sandlot, which also publishes games, is part of Digital Chocolate's ongoing initiative to expand in the rapidly-growing social gaming sector, and accelerate cross-platform game development efforts. San Mateo-based Digital Chocolate said the buy will give the company access to more developers, and expand its portfolio of popular game franchises. Sandlot's games have been downloaded 300 million times since 2002, according to the companies. Digital Chocolate's games include Facebook games Army Attack, Millionaire City and Zombie Lane, among other web and mobile titles. Digital Chocolate CEO Trip Hawkins said, "Sandlot has built a great reputation in casual games. We love their development teams and we can now expand further in Seattle and Eastern Europe. We expect to be the leading game company in at least 5 of the 7 cities where we now have development studios." As part of the acquisition, Sandlot founder and CEO Dan Bernstein will become VP of Digital Chocolate and manage Sandlot studios in St. Petersburg, Russia and Bothell, WA.