NEOM Level Up Welcomes Five Studios into Cohort 3, Marking the Program’s Third Year
NEOM’s Level Up Accelerator welcomes five Saudi game studios into Cohort 3, marking the program’s third year of supporting high-potential teams.
Alongside funding, studios receive intensive mentorship across business, finance, marketing, tech, art, and game design/production, built to accelerate real releases and launch campaigns.
NEOM has announced the five Saudi game studios selected to receive funding in the latest cycle of its flagship gaming accelerator, Level Up, marking the program’s biggest cycle to date. Alongside the funded cohort, the accelerator’s initial phase also provided mentorship support to a further 18 studios, expanding the total reach of this cycle and reinforcing Level Up’s role as a key engine for ecosystem growth.
A cornerstone program for the Kingdom’s gaming ambitions
Driven by NEOM Gaming, Level Up is described as the Kingdom’s longest-running gaming accelerator and a cornerstone initiative aligned with the National Gaming & Esports Strategy under Saudi Vision 2030. The program is designed to help studios navigate the real-world challenges of building sustainable game businesses—through structured guidance, targeted expertise, and direct access to global industry networks.
The five studios selected for funding
After a competitive first phase that supported more than 23 studios through mentorship across multiple topics, NEOM selected five studios to progress into the funded stage of the program:
- Aiqona Productions: blending animation, storytelling, and interactive design
- Fourcast Studio: developing a social PC multiplayer experience with unique mechanics
- Makera: a user-generated-content studio enabling communities to create and shape experiences
- OFF BOX Studios: focused on innovative, immersive game experiences
- Phys: emphasizing technology, design, and movement/exercise among children
What the funded phase includes
The selected studios will receive:
- Critical funding to accelerate product launch
- Seven months of continued mentorship, totaling 600 hours per studio
- Access to NEOM’s growing Publisher Partner Network & Support Partner Network
DigiPen’s role: hands-on mentorship to strengthen execution
As NEOM’s execution partner for Level Up, DigiPen Institute of Technology supports the program’s mentorship delivery with practical, studio-facing guidance, helping teams translate ambition into production-ready execution.
Across the cohort, DigiPen’s mentorship work focuses on supporting multiple releases and launch campaigns during the program, with an emphasis on:
- Business & Business Ops mentorship: studio strategy and operating model, roles and processes, publisher readiness, partnerships, and commercialization planning.
- Finance mentorship: budgeting and burn management, runway planning, milestone-based forecasting, pricing and revenue modeling, and financial reporting fundamentals.
- Marketing mentorship: audience definition and positioning, go-to-market planning, community and content strategy, channel mix and campaign execution, and KPI-driven growth (wishlists/installs/retention) from pre-launch through launch and live operations.
- Tech mentorship: architecture decisions, performance and scalability, tooling and pipelines, QA/build stability, and release readiness.
- Art mentorship: art direction and visual consistency, production workflows, asset planning and optimization, UI/UX art, and quality benchmarks aligned with target platforms.
- Game Design & Production mentorship: core loop and systems design, balance and playtest-driven iteration, plus scoping, milestone planning, sprint execution, and risk management.
Building long-term outcomes
Level Up has already contributed to the creation of more than 170 jobs, with 100% portfolio survivability, and highlights prior cohort wins including international publishing, investment milestones, and regional awards.
Source / Original NEOM article:
NEOM Newsroom — “NEOM Gaming Accelerator Welcomes Largest-Ever Cycle of Startup Studios” (January 7, 2026).