User:SQhi/Nitrome

For the Weapon in Nitrome Must Die, please see Gun (Nitrome Must Die)

Nitrome (pronounced NYE-trome ), officially registered as Nitrome Limited, is a small flash game development studio based in London, England. Nitrome was founded by Mat Annal and Heather Stancliffe but has now grown to have 10 employees, helping with game development. Due to the small team and creativity of the group, new flash games are released on regular basis (usually about two a month). The main income for the company is through advertising and licensing their games to larger flash game websites.

Nitrome was originally mobile phone games' developer but now focuses on browser based games.

All of their flash games(except their advert games) can be played on Nitrome.com, their official website.

Early days
Nitrome started up in 2004 and was founded by Heather Stancliffe and Mat Annal. The office at the time was the size of a bedroom. For income, they made advergames (games made to advertise a product), such as Vege-Mania Game. About 11 months after Nitrome was founded, a conversation about Mobile Phone Games stemmed up between Heather and Mat. Heather didn't think it was such a good idea. After much persuasion, a Mobile Phone game finally went into production. Nitrome launched their site on April 5th 2005. Their Mobile Phone Game Four Play was the only Mobile Phone Game released, Chick Flick; the first game in development was abandoned, and another game was left unfinished. Mat's brother, Jon joined the Nitrome team on May 20th 2005. Nitrome left the cellphone gaming business, and entered the Browser Flash Games business.

Flash games
Nitrome made a few advergames in 2005 before making their own games. Nitrome remade their site and released their first game Hot Air in 2005. Although they didn't make much money off of it, they ported Chick Flick and released it on their site in 2006, after adding and removing features. Nitrome released several other game being sponsored by Miniclip, and also hired testers at first but stopped. Games took a long time to make at that time. Nitrome hired more people the in 2007 and took less time to make games. Nitrome made sequels to some of there games, and during that year MTV Arcade sponsored a few games. They released skins so players could personalize the site, and released more the next year.

Modern days
With more people hired in 2008, this allowed Nitrome to make even more games in less time. Nitrome's games also had a story; Nitrome released several popular games in 2008. Nitrome released sequels in 2009 for games released the same year. Ice Breaker released in January 2009 was hugely popular and spawned two sequels. Twin Shot also gained popularity, and gaining a sequel. Nitrome also tested out MochiCoins in Twin Shot 2. MochiCoins allowed players to buy coins and spend the coins on extra content in Twin Shot 2, or other MochiCoin games. Nitrome tried MochiCoins out on B.C. Bow Contest, but did not implement the software into any future games. In the end of December, Nitrome announced they would be on Facebook.

Nitrome made more games in 2010, but in the summer, between July and September, Nitrome experienced a problem which prevented blog posts to be posted, and during this time no games were released for two months, the second longest Nitrome has ever went without a game release. During the two month drought, Nitrome worked on making Super Feed Me, but after noticing a drop in their revenue, they returned to making flash games. A short time after this drought, Nitrome moved to central London. Nitrome released games in 2011 believed to have been "ported" from the Nitrome Enjoyment System. Nitrome in April began to post a blog post on every Weekday until the end of May. After this, Nitrome went back to there usual routine of posting only when there is Fan or New content, except they began posting a weekly Friday update informing fans of content that may or will be posted or released in the coming week. Nitrome reached 100 games on November 23rd 2011, with the release of Nitrome Must Die.

Logo
Nitrome's logo has always been the letters N-I-T-R-O-M-E displayed in a slanted line. The colours of the letter vary depending on where the logo is seen. There is a different colour scheme and background for the Nitrome logo in all games' Startups.

The classic Nitrome logo was simply just pink and white letters, while the logo Nitrome used after the release of Nitrome.com.

2.0 revised the letters as bronze coloured (hues of yellow and orange).

In-game references
Nitrome has been referenced as a company in some of their games. In others, there website (nitrome.com) is shown as a level.

Square Meal
Square meal has one level where all the blocks are arranged to look like Nitrome.

Bad Ice-Cream
A level design with the word Nitrome is also present in Bad Ice-cream

Rainbogeddon
Rainbogeddon has a level where the walls have openings that resemble the letters: N,I,T,R,O,M,E,.,C,O,M. Or Nitrome.com, in the top it says NITRO and in the middle it says ME and at the bottom it says .COM.



Rubble Trouble Tokyo
On level 31, the player has to destroy a giant screen with a level of Off the Rails on it. Before the player starts the level, the Boss notices the giant screen and mentions Nitrome, with Barry and Garryresponding by saying how "awesome" Nitrome is, and how they play their games.



Nitrome Must Die
Nitrome appears as a ruthless game making company who oppress the Employees by torturing them and making them finish projects in a small amount of time. This is seen by the content on the walls of some levels. Two friends - Austin Carter and Justin Bennet - go to destroy Nitrome, after being fed up with losing so much at their games. Nitrome's fictional work building, Nitrome Towers, also makes an appearance; having 100 floors.

Final Ninja
On level 10, the word "Nitrome" appears as a vertical neon sign.

Location
Nitrome was formerly located at the Old Fire House up until July or August 2010. They then moved to the Davina House, then to another are located in the middle of London.

Name origin
Mat Annal stated in an interview with Jay is Games that when he (Mat Annal) was creating Nitrome, he wanted to give the company a "made up name" so that mention of the name would mean only them (Nitrome) and so that they could get a dot com domain "that would rank highly in search engines under it [the word Nitrome]".

Staff
Nitrome has several staff which work on parts of games. A "-" means they have not left, as well as have not done work in a game before leaving.

Trivia

 * A lot of Nitrome's Game Names are based of wordplay and insults, Four Play, Chick Flick, Square Meal, Headcase, Knuckleheads, Small Fry, and Numbskull for example.


 * Nitrome is commonly mispronounced NIT-rome. This may be due to a word with similar spelling— nichrome, which is pronounced as nigh-chrome.


 * Most sound effects(aka Sound FX) Nitrome uses are used across many games.