Shane Kim has helped put some of the most recognizable gaming titles on the map, including Halo and Gears of War. Now, the former corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios is lending his support to Zipline Games, a fast-growing 13-person gaming startup based in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood.

Kim, who is joining Zipline’s board, said that the company offers a “fresh and well-executed approach to helping studios build cross-platform mobile games.”

Shane Kim

We’ve certainly seen a lot of activity in the mobile gaming arena in recent months, and Hooper admits that it is a “hot” space right now. That’s especially the case for the problem that Zipline is trying to solve, which is making it easier for developers to roll out titles across various mobile platforms.

In addition to Kim’s appointment, the company also just scored another $400,000 in angel financing, bringing total capital raised to just over $1 million.

Backers of the company include Benaroya Capital, Founder’s Co-op, Groundspeak and others.

Zipline is led by Todd Hooper — who previously founded Napera Networks and worked in executive roles at WatchGuard and GraniteEdge Networks —  and Patrick Meehan — a graduate of DigiPen University who previously led mobile game development for Groundspeak.

Zipline is the developer of the Moai mobile gaming platform, an open source platform that allows developers to switch languages and architectures back and forth as they build games for the iPhone, Android and other platforms.

The company plans to demonstrate the power of its technology later this summer with the release of WolfToss — a free iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7 game described a “challenging new physics puzzler.” It also got a ringing endorsement earlier this year when Jordan Weisman’s Crimson, the first title published by Bungie Aerospace, indicated that it was using the Moai platform to build the game.

Previously on GeekWire: Android and iPhone game development in a snap: That’s the promise of Zipline

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