Noxu Game Studios
 Logo since 2015 | |
Formerly | Norup-Starek Games (1992–2006) |
|---|---|
| Private | |
| Industry | Video games |
| Founded | March 15, 1992 |
| Founders | Nicklas Norup & Wisław Starek |
| Headquarters | , |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Nicklas Norup (CEO & President) Wisław Starek (CEO & Studio Director) |
| Products | Emperor, Tremendum, Grateful Dead, Fatal Deception and Kinetic series |
| Owner | Nicklas Norup (50%) Wisław Starek (50%) |
Number of employees | 382 (2022) |
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 employee 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.
Tremendum and Grateful Dead (1996-2006)
Following the success of Emperor, Norup-Starek Games expanded to 46 employees and started work on a sequel. Emperor II was released in 1998 and had many new features, most notably online multiplier games, this was thanks to an upgrade to the Virulent engine that allowed to multiplayer and online functionality. This online functionality allowed to release of an expansion to Emperor II in 1999 called New Horizons which expanded the space age part of the game tremendously and was received well by critics. Norup was fascinated by these new online possibilities and proposed a purely online multiplayer game focused on teamwork and skill based gameplay, following input from Starek and other team members, the design concept for Tremendum was finalized in early 2000.
Tremendum would be a radically different game from previous Emperor titles, being a First Person Shooter with a heavy emphasis on movement, positioning and precision in a purely online experience.
Expansion (2006-2015)
In 2006 Norup-Starek Games was reincorporated as Noxu Game Studios after moving to their new, and current offices, in Halling. New internal development studios were set up to work on multiple games at the same time.
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
CEO and Studio Director 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
| 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)