Zoink AB was a Swedish video game developer based in Gothenburg. The company was founded by Klaus Lyngeled in 2001 and formed the

Thunderful Thunderful Group AB is a Swedish video game holding company based in Gothenburg. It was founded in December 2019 through a merger between Thunderful AB ( Bergsala Holding's video game holding) and Bergsala Holding's distribution business, consi ...

group with

Image & Form Image & Form International AB was a Swedish video game developer based in Gothenburg. The company was founded by Brjánn Sigurgeirsson in 1997 and formed the Thunderful group with Zoink in 2017. In 2020, Image & Form was integrated into Thun ...

in 2017. In 2020, Zoink was integrated into Thunderful Development.

History

Zoink was founded in 2001 by Klaus Lyngeled, who acted as its

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

. Lyngeled had initially started developing games when he and some friends produced a pinball game for the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...

. They later got together with a similar team based in Norrköping and, together, founded Unique Development Studios. When Lyngeled got tired of working for Unique Development Studios, he moved to the United States to work for

Shiny Entertainment Shiny Entertainment, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Laguna Beach, California. Founded in October 1993 by David Perry, Shiny was the creator of video games such as ''Earthworm Jim'', ''MDK'' and '' Enter the Matrix''. Perr ...

. He worked on '' Messiah'' and '' Sacrifice'' but when he began working on '' Enter the Matrix'', he faced, among other things, issues with his

visa Visa most commonly refers to: *Visa Inc., a US multinational financial and payment cards company ** Visa Debit card issued by the above company ** Visa Electron, a debit card ** Visa Plus, an interbank network *Travel visa, a document that allows ...

, wherefore he returned to Sweden, where he founded Zoink. By 2003, Zoink was working on animated films, later advertisement films, and finally advertisement games; clients for the latter included

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

, The Coca-Cola Company,

Cartoon Network Cartoon Network (often abbreviated as CN) is an American cable television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. It is a part of The Cartoon Network, Inc., a division that also has the broadcasting and production activities of Boomerang, ...

, and Google. Zoink's first full game was ''

The Kore Gang ''The Kore Gang: Outvasion from Inner Earth'' is an action-adventure game for the Wii. The game is notable for its very prolonged development cycle over the course of ten years, during which many different companies became involved and the game m ...

'', revived after its original Xbox version had been cancelled for six years. Zoink's break-out title was ''Stick It to the Man!'', later spawning a

spiritual successor A spiritual successor (sometimes called a spiritual sequel) is a product or fictional work that is similar to, or directly inspired by, another previous work, but (unlike a traditional prequel or sequel A sequel is a work of literature, film, ...

, ''Flipping Death''. Bergsala Holding acquired half of Zoink in 2014, after

's Brjánn Sigurgeirsson introduced Lyngeled to the company. Lyngeled, Sigurgeirsson, and Bergsala Holding decided to merge the two studios and created

as their parent company in December 2017. In May 2018, Zoink had 25 employees. That year, Zoink released a new game, '' Fe''. Its next title, '' Lost in Random'', was released in 2021. In 2020, Thunderful (now called Thunderful Group) merged Zoink with Image & Form and Guru Games to create Thunderful Development.

Games developed

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.zoinkgames.com/ 2001 establishments in Sweden Companies based in Gothenburg Privately held companies of Sweden Video game companies established in 2001 Video game companies of Sweden Video game development companies