Nitrome Limited, commonly known as Nitrome, is an independent game development company based in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. The company makes Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

-based games. Their games are recognizable by the pixel art

Pixel art

Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobile phone games are mostly pixel art.- History :The term pixel art was first...

 design and cartoon-like appearance, along with a jingle

Jingle

A jingle is a short tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. The jingle contains one or more hooks and lyrics that explicitly promote the product being advertised, usually through the use of one or more advertising slogans. Ad buyers use jingles in radio and television...

 to the start of every game and chiptune

Chiptune

A chiptune, also known as chip music, is synthesized electronic music often produced with the sound chips of vintage computers and video game consoles, as well as with other methods such as emulation. In the early 1980s, personal computers became cheaper and more accessible than they had previously...

 tunes. Nitrome was originally started by Mat Annal and Heather Stancliffe, two graphic designers, intending to create games for mobile phones. Instead, the company began taking on commissions Internet-based flash games and have continued to do so since, making up to two games a month. Nitrome's games are published on their website and are often available to license on other websites such as Miniclip

Miniclip

Miniclip is a website known for its browser-based casual games. It was started in 2001 by Robert Small and Tihan Presbie on a budget of £40,000 and quickly grew to become a leader in its respective market. As of 1701, the company has been valued at over £200 million, having been profitable for six...

 and MTV Arcade.

History

Nitrome's creation stemmed from a conversation between Mat Annal and Heather Stancliffe, in which Mat suggested that they make a game for mobile phones. Heather was initially hesitant, but Mat persuaded her that it could be a successful idea. The temporary website for their upcoming project was first launched on April 3, 2005, with a preview video of Chick Flick, their intended first game. On May 20, 2005, Mat's brother Jon joined the Nitrome team to help with the pixel art. Heather Stancliffe left Nitrome in 2010 to persue a different career.

On August 26, 2011, Nitrome released a new design of the site, named "Nitrome 2.0". It includes a new skin, including all the old skins, and a new layout to the website.

Skins

Nitrome's website is primarily aimed at broadcasting and publicising the games the company has made, which is obvious in its design. There are various links to different games about the page and a slideshow on the front page demonstrating in-game videos from the sixteen most recent games.

The website lets the user select which skin

Skin (computing)

In computing, a skin is a custom graphical appearance achieved by the use of a graphical user interface that can be applied to specific software and websites to suit the purpose, topic, or tastes of different users....

 to view the pages with, from a choice of 12 skins. Users have the option to either save the skin they have selected, use the most recent skin or randomly choose the skin each time the user visits the website. The skins, , are Classic, Winter, Retro, Horror, Party, Snowman, Factory, Ice Temple, NES (Nitrome Enjoyment System), Steampunk, Nitrome 2.0 (named for the website changes) and 100th Game (for the release of Nitrome's 100th game, Nitrome Must Die).

Games

The games made by the company can be put into four main categories. "Hot games" are the most recently made games, and thus considered the most popular (hence, "hot"). "Main games" tend to have full storylines, varying gameplay and multiple levels though not necessarily recent enough to be considered "hot". "Mini games" are shorter, sometimes with only one level, whilst "Multiplayer games" are designed for more than one person to play at once.

Nitrome has made games for MTV Arcade

MTV

MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

, Candystand

Candystand

Candystand.com is a casual game portal owned by Funtank LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Publishers Clearing House and based in New York City, NY. Launched in 1997 by Nabisco, Inc., it was the first major advergame portal available on the World Wide Web. The site was created for Nabisco by...

 and Miniclip

Miniclip

Miniclip is a website known for its browser-based casual games. It was started in 2001 by Robert Small and Tihan Presbie on a budget of £40,000 and quickly grew to become a leader in its respective market. As of 1701, the company has been valued at over £200 million, having been profitable for six...

. The company has also made "advergames", which, unlike the aforementioned, are made to advertise a product or service. The company allows for webmaster

Webmaster

A webmaster , also called a web architect, web developer, site author, or website administrator is a person responsible for maintaining one or many websites...

s to place certain games on their websites, for a predetermined fee.

Most of the games are divided into levels (usually between 10 and 100), and also give the player the option to replay any level they have completed, even if they have lost. Some games also feature the concept of bosses.

Some games, such as Mutiny, Twang, Fault Line and Rustyard, have won awards in various areas.

In July 2009, Nitrome Limited released Twin Shot 2, their first game to use MochiCoins, a system allowing players to pay for extra content in browser game

Browser game

A browser game is a computer game that is played over the Internet using a web browser. Browser games can be created and run using standard web technologies or browser plug-ins. Browser games include all video game genres and can be single-player or multiplayer...

s. Mat Annal said that Nitrome were "trialling" and that they "don't intend to use it in every game". They used MochiCoins again in B.C. Bow Contest, which they have updated twice.

Shop

On August 28, 2010, Nitrome opened up their shop page. , these were on the shop page:

• Music tracks from their games (available on iTunes, Napster, or Amazon MP3).
• Papercraft (Free)
• iPhone/iPod touch games (coming soon)
• MochiCoins microtransactions for Twin Shot 2 and B.C. Bow Contest