Carbon Studio
Carbon Studio is a pioneer in the Polish and global market in the field of game development and applications dedicated to VR technology. The idea to create a studio of our own came in 2014, when, after backing the Oculus Rift Kickstarter campaign, we received one of the first devkits of the headset. Contact with this new, pioneer technology that no one has had in their hands before was a breakthrough for us – since that moment, we knew we wanted to focus solely on exploring the potential of VR and making our own games.
A year later, on the initiative of Alexander Caban, Karolina Koszuta and Blazej Szaflik, Carbon Studio began working on its first projects. Although virtual reality was a completely new medium in the video game market at the time, we immediately recognized its depth and capability – we knew that such an amazing technology would surely open a completely new and exciting chapter in the world of gaming and appeal to gamers all around the world. Now all we had to do was provide them with a good product.
Yesterday & today
In 2015, with a small budget and great enthusiasm, we started writing our own history under the name of Carbon Studio. We set ourselves the goal of creating our own full-scale VR game. In the spring of 2015, we took part in the first, historic VR Game Jam organized by Oculus and Samsung. It was there that the concept of our sci-fi adventure game, Alice VR, was born. Its prototype secured us a place in the final round of the competition. We released Alice VR in October 2016, with CDP.PL (Klabater) as its publisher. On the day of its premiere, Alice VR ran on all available VR goggles, and was one of the longest VR games at the time.
The next milestone in the studio’s path was the release of The Wizards, a game that allows players to take on the role of powerful mages and cast spells using hand gestures. We released the early access version of The Wizards independently in July 2017 on Steam and Oculus Store platforms. Shortly after its full release in 2018, the game became one of the best-rated VR games on Steam and Metacritic, as reflected by the numerous awards and accolades it earned. A year later, the title received a massive update called Enhanced Edition, which thanks to a number of significant changes and improvements, was warmly welcomed by VR players all around the world. The Wizards was also one of the first titles available for the then groundbreaking Quest 1 goggles, and appeared in the Quest store less than a month after their release. In July 2018, we released The Wizards: Trials of Meliora, a standalone VR game based on The Wizards, dedicated to mobile VR goggles.
Soon after, we started our cooperation with Sony, a world leader in the console gaming industry. In mid-March 2019, our flagship title The Wizards – Enhanced Edition appeared on the PlayStation Store and quickly hit the platform’s VR bestseller list.
After a series of successes of The Wizards – Enhanced Edition, we decided that a fantastic world full of magic, adventure, and spell casting using player hand gestures was something worth pursuing. As a result, the next game in the series, The Wizards – Dark Times, saw the light of day in June 2020. The title once again invites players to take on the role of powerful mages, this time offering a wider range of available spells, vastly improved graphics, and a more expansive world. Since then The Wizards – Dark Times has enjoyed unflagging popularity, both among PCVR players and Meta Quest goggle enthusiasts. By the end of 2022, games under the name of The Wizards series had reached total sales of more than 350,000 copies.
A major update for The Wizards – Dark Times, which in addition to numerous improvements to the single-player mode, also introduces the hotly anticipated cooperative multiplayer mode, has been released on PCVR and Meta Quest platforms on November 28th, 2023.
In 2019, Carbon Studio became a public company and became the first ever VR company to be listed on the NewConnect stock exchange.
In the same year, Carbon Studio partnered with one of the most recognizable brands in the world of tabletop and video games – UK-based Games Workshop. The PCVR version of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Tempestfall was released at the end of 2021, and six months later it debuted in the Meta Quest store. The title takes full advantage of the extremely rich universe of Warhammer Age of Sigmar, which brings together millions of fans of the “grim world of perilous adventures.” The game has received numerous patches and updates since its release, which have expanded its content with a number of improvements and additional modes – Hardcore and the sand-boxed Storm Trials.
In December 2022, we started cooperation with the leading publisher of the VR industry – Vertigo Games.
Today & tomorrow
Today, our team consists of over fifty people. What unites us is our love of gaming (after all, we’re gamers ourselves too!) and a common goal – creating high quality VR games with graphics characteristic of AAA titles, on a budget of an independent studio. In order to maintain our place among the world’s leaders in the virtual reality industry, we have to deeply care about the high quality and innovation of our products. That is why we run numerous research and development projects, through which we acquire new essential knowledge and capabilities. We want our games to be accessible to as many users as possible, while providing entertainment to experienced players as well. And this is the idea behind our newest project Crimen – Mercenary Tales, which will be released in May 2023.
Crimen – Mercenary Tales is a humorous, extremely colorful, and adventure-packed action game, in which we will have a unique opportunity to visit seventeenth-century Europe and meet a number of interesting heroes characteristic of the era. The game’s pre-release trailer was viewed by 50,000 players, and their reactions to other presented materials are unequivocally positive. Crimen – Mercenary Tales is a game designed for the currently most popular and profitable VR platform – Meta Quest 2. Our goal is to reach the widest possible audience of players and invite them to relive the eight crazy adventures we have prepared for them.
The studio’s progression took a significant step with the adoption of Hand Tracking technology. The result of this decision was the development of Mindset, a VR puzzle game based on vibrantly colored graphics, an engaging storyline and challenging logic puzzles in the form of mysterious cubes. Mindset is available on the Meta Quest platform. During the UploadVR Showcase Winter 2023 Carbon Studio announced its next title, Hunt Together, which is a VR horror game based on PvP gameplay. The game in its Meta Quest version was released in January 2024, with the PCVR version following about month after.
In addition to producing the highest quality games, our ambition is to maintain a pioneering position in the market of immersive technologies that enhance and connect the physical and virtual worlds (MR, AR). We believe that these technologies will soon revolutionize important areas of life, and we intend to continue spearheading this revolution. Having established ourselves in the market, we are now developing an XR department in the company in order to expand into publishing apps and games for Augmented and Mixed Reality.