Noxcon 2019

Hello Noxcrew community!

Welcome to the very first Community Update post (the name needs work) where I fill you in with the goings on at Noxcrew HQ!

If you don’t know who I am, I’m Harry AKA Noctis_Mori but you can just call me Noctis. I’m the community manager here at Noxcrew, I run the Noxcrew Discord, write a lot of the behind the scenes posts on our website and until recently I moderated and edited the highlight videos for the Noxcrew Twitch Streams. I also wrote behind the scene posts for our patron backers, but now I’m writing them for you!

I want to give you guys an insight into our creative process, fill you in on what it’s like to work as part of Noxcrew, and share some sneak peeks at the next big project or social event that we’ll be taking part in!

For our first post, I want to show off some stuff about our latest project that just got ‘shipped’, some sneaky hints about our next big project and share with you guys some juicy gossip from our latest get together!

First of all, that lovely project that just got sent off to Microsoft for testing (aka ‘shipped’). Codenamed ‘Some Random Name’ (we always codename our maps to prevent early spoilers) this map is one of the most in-depth projects we’ve worked on to date, being the result of many months of development, reworking and refining, but now it’s finally ready!

This map will be our 5th and final creative toolbox map for a little while, we have other types of maps we’d like to explore this year, but I can promise you that ‘Some Random Name’ is stuffed to bursting with all sorts of cool details and interesting activities for you to mess about with! I don’t want to spoil everything before it gets here, but I can show you guys a few sneaky snaps and give you an idea of what to expect :D

We’re hoping for it to be released from Microsoft’s clutches and reach you guys sometime next month so keep an eye out for it then.

But while ‘Some Random Name’ is getting prodded and poked we aren’t sitting around being idle here at Noxcrew. After some pretty intense discussions over our winter break, we’ve started work on our brand new project, codenamed ‘InterestinglyFreakyWomen’ (Blame Noxite, I wanted to call it ‘Intergalactic Food Wars’)

I can’t say much right now as the project has only just gotten underway but what I can say is that it’s planned as an adventure map and you might get a bit chilly playing it!

We’re in the development and building stage of things right now, seeing how far we can push mechanics and creating some weird and wonderful stuff, but we should be ready to ship it by the end of next month, if all goes according to plan. I’ll be keeping you up to date as the project progresses and hopefully get some interesting pictures sometime soon :)

Finally, something I can tell you a lot about, our January Noxcon. These bi-annual events see the whole Noxcrew team (well most of them in this case) get together to hang out, play games and plan the next batch of projects. These events are always loud, exciting and a lot of fun, usually with something strange and stupid going down :D

Unlike our last get together, where the team nearly melted in the unusual heat of last years summer, this event saw all of us head to the peaceful Lincolnshire countryside for a week of madness, music and Disney films.

We played a lot of Rock Band and I mean a lot of Rock Band. By the end of the week, most of the team were playing at least one role on expert, we’d created individual avatars with our rock names, gone on several different tours around the world and become part of our own rock documentary. The vocal strain did cause me to lose my voice for 3 days (no doubt to the relief of everyone) but we must suffer for our art :P

On the other hand, for the amount of Rock Band we played, it’s nothing compared to the amount of board games Noxite ran and/or played over our time together. Both ‘Mansions’ and ‘Mountains of Madness’ were a particularly favourite (Nox seems to be going through a bit of a Lovecraftian phase at the moment) with nearly every member taking part in a game, though not everyone succumbed to madness… Not that you could tell if we had.

‘Xcom’ was also particularly tense, with Tom AKA Frankstein rolling poorly every single time he was asked to, and group games such as ‘Werewolves’ and ‘Two Rooms and Boom’ nearly tearing the team apart as friend betrayed friend and people were ruthlessly murdered, all over a delightful cocktail courtesy of Noxite’s sister, Lola.

In case this is all starting to sound a little too relaxed, these Noxcons are not just a week’s holiday to mess about, but a chance for all of us to get on the same page creatively and start to plan our next step forward. We held a full Noxcrew meeting with every member in attendance (even the ones who couldn’t quite make it to the house) to discuss our future as well as create a guideline for the projects we hope to accomplish over 2019 (yes that includes Blozark we will try to release it this year) We discussed new gameplay mechanics, sought new areas of inspiration for future projects and showed off some interesting and exciting bits and pieces that members had been working on in their spare time - including a really cool dino demonstration from redstoner Stuart.

As quickly as these Noxcons seem to go and as infrequently as we get to do them, it’s always nice to get the gang together in one place. It really helps us to gel together, not only as a creative team but also as a group of friends doing what they love together.

I hope that over the next weeks, months and hopefully years, I can share with you all the passion that drives this team forward and the processes we go through to make sure that we best maps we possibly can, all while still enjoying ourselves and doing what we always dreamed we could :)

See you next time!!

Noctis