Noxu Game Studios

Noxu Game Studios

Logo since 2006
Formerly	Norup-Starek Games (1992–2006)
Type	Private
Industry	Video games
Founded	March 15, 1992 (1992-03-15) in Halling, Littland
Founders	Nicklas Norup & Wisław Starek
Headquarters	Halling , Littland
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Nicklas Norup (CEO) Wisław Starek (COO & Studio Director)
Owner	Nicklas Norup (50%) Wisław Starek (50%)

Noxu Game Studios is a Littish video game developer founded in 1992 by Nicklas Norup and Wisław Starek.

History

Founding and Virulent (1992-1996)

Noxu Game Studios was originally founded as Norup-Starek Games in 1992 by the friends Nicklas Norup and Wisław Starek. Both of them had worked for many years at NordSoft but were laid off in 1991 as the Littish economy started to stagnate. They founded the company as they saw a gap in the Littish video game market, that there barely were any, and started to work on their first game Implex in August 1993, after buying access to the Square game engine. Implex was a moderate success, receiving mixed ratings but had good commercial sales. Implex is a futuristic puzzle game, where the player must try to escape a high security prison facility to gain their freedom. It is looked upon fondly by its fans and has an active modding community in part thanks to its charm and unique art style.

During the development of Implex, Starek noted how sluggish working with the Square engine felt and expressed to Norup the need for a new engine for future games. Over a weekend in 1993, they sketched out the infrastructure and internal logic of a new game engine and spent the next 2 years developing it, almost going bankrupt in the process. In 1995, the Virulent game engine was finished and the now 15 man company now started work on the first game using their own in-house engine. In March 1996 Emperor released to overwhelming praise and commercial success. Emperor was unlike any games of its time as the player took control of a small tribe in the stone age and advanced all the way to space colonization. Many critics pointed out the endless possibilities of the game, as most of the games content was procedurally generated, as well as the games art style, which in part was thanks to the shader technology of the Virulent engine. Emperor would receive an expansion in November 1996 called Emperor: Legends, which added many folktales and myth features to the early stages of the game, which was received well.

Acquisitions (2015-Present)

As of 2021 Noxu has four internal development teams.

Studio Name	Studio Lead	Games
Noxu Gold	Kristian Kałuża	Tremendum
Noxu Cyan	Magnus Jensen	Fatal Deception
Noxu Crimson	Gabe Richard	Kinetic
Noxu Violet	Lina Ashworth	Unannounced

Virulent Game Engine

The Virulent Engine is a proprietary video game engine

Co-founder and COO Wisław Starek said in a 2015 interview:

The development of Implex was a nightmare. The Square engine, although advanced for its time and easy to gain access too, was so sluggish and slow to work in. Many of the problems of Implex, such as bugs, movement issues and others are because we couldn't fully fix them in that freaking engine. That is why I said to Nicklas we should use something else for the next game, because like hell I would develop in that engine again. That's how Virulent was born. We spent a weekend in 1993 sketching out what a new engine should have and by the end we had made our own engine, we decided to make this new engine if we wanted to continue making games. We named it Virulent as it means "bitterly hostile", which was how we felt towards the Square engine.

Video Games

Noxu's top 5 selling franchises

Franchise	First release	Sales (m)
Emperor	1996	6.2
Tremendum	2002	20.4
Grateful Dead	2005	11.6
Fatal Deception	2013	14.9
Kinetic	2018	3.1

Emperor

Strategy Game (Civ)

Tremendum

Movement Shooter (Quake/Doom)

Grateful Dead

Open World RPG (Skyrim/Witcher)

Fatal Deception

Steampunk FPS (Call of Duty but Victorian)

Kinetic

Sci-fi RTS-FPS (Natural Selection like)