Acquiring investment isn’t a simple task – as many indie game developers have come to know. Despite jaw-dropping requirements some VC’s may pose, there are players in the social gaming space making headway, the latest of which is Sneaky Games. The Austin-based social gaming company announced raising a ‘six-figure’ investment from angels and Liahona Ventures. Sneaky Games launched their first game called Fantasy Kingdoms on Facebook in April and currently has 294,000 MAUs. Read more after the jump.

Our recent coverage of Fantasy Kingdom led us into the medieval farming game, enchanting us with its mana and wizardry components. The game has been growing at a significant rate supposedly without much spend on marketing – somewhat surprising news that snuck up on the team, according to Christopher Shonk, Liahona’s managing director.

Shonk called Godwin’s company a great example of a “compelling team that could make really good games that were best-of-breed.” And “Fantasy Kingdoms” grew virally without having to spend much money on marketing – a good measure of its potential, he said.”It kind of snuck up on everyone.”

Companies like Challenge Games have also came out of Austin, TX, which is a new hotbed for entrepreneurship and named one of the best future cities to live in. Challenge Games, developer of one of the first games on Facebook called Packrat, was acquired by Zynga especially because of Zynga’s desire to expand their studio operations in Austin due to its rich talent in the games industry.

The social gaming industry remains hot with new entrants emerging daily. The name of the game, however, is distribution and retention. Traffic is key and we should see more companies and games gain users more easily as Facebook improves its support for games and companies figure out how to leverage that to the maximum. What’s your outlook on independants creating social games?