BUILDING THE METAVERSE, ONE VOXEL AT A TIME

This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Use the link below to kick things off with a message. And if you want to take it further and follow us « to infinity and beyond », chat us up through these social media platforms:

Located in the beating heart of the City of Light, our Paris studio is only two blocks away from the Arts et Métiers metro station and near many incredible restaurants.

It doesn’t get closer to underground shopping malls and downtown Montreal’s famous Ste-Catherine Street than our Canadian studio, overlooking The Bay department store and mere minutes away from McGill station.

We want to hire the top talent wherever it may be found. Our seamless company culture makes collaborations transcend borders and timezones. It’s our superpower.

Want to work with your colleagues in an office space? We’ve got you covered. Our studios are located in central, easily accessible locations, and the coffee pot never sleeps in any of them.

Want to work from home in your favorite fuzzy slippers? We’ve got you covered, too. Our workflows are set up to ensure that remote work is as efficient as it would be in our offices.

Novaquark has offices in Paris and Montreal… and wherever you are.

Dual Universe is a forward-thinking online game featuring a persistent and shared universe made with next-generation voxels. As a true precursor to the metaverse, the game world is fully editable, and the game experience is entirely driven by its players. Dual Universe is now available on PC on the official website and on Steam. Players can also enjoy the game on almost any computer via NVIDIA’s cloud-based platform GeForce NOW.

We’re just getting started! We have several other projects in the works that leverage the power of our voxel technology.

Is it fair to call it working? For most of us, it doesn’t really feel like it. We’re always on the lookout for passionate and creative co-workers who want to team up with us to build something ground-breaking, preferably in voxels. Oh, and did we mention that we like to have fun while we’re at it? We’re making games, after all! Novaquarkians often meet up, in person and online, to share food, games and good times.

Can’t find a position that matches your impressive skill set? We’d still like to hear from you.

Our unique voxel expertise and technology are incredibly innovative, appealing to a wide audience and suitable for an array of projects. Players are empowered to fully tap into their wildest imaginings to create stunning buildings and contraptions, fully-functioning vehicles of every shape and size, and awe-inspiring pieces of art without the need to be a professional designer.

Our first game, Dual Universe, is a great showcase of the power of voxels in the hands of players. And we’re just getting started.

Eight years of development, two years of beta, and many long days spent working by our passionate team have brought this project to life. We salute the dedication and skill of our team and the creativity of our fantastic community. Over beta, our unparalleled voxel technology and single-shard server have enabled wonders to be brought to life by players, and they’re only just getting started. We’re looking forward to the future here at Novaquark, and we raise a glass to the long road ahead of us, filled with wonder and excitement. 

If you haven't seen our launch trailer yet, you can watch it here:https://youtu.be/LjDz5qzDSj0

DUAL UNIVERSE HAS LAUNCHED! SHAPE YOUR UNIVERSE NOW

We’re launching Dual Universe on Steam! It’s an exciting time for us at NQ as we bring our game to as many players who may enjoy it as possible and give those who prefer it the option to purchase the game on Steam. 

Our Steam page is already live! You can support us by wishlisting Dual Universe on steam and recommending it to your friends, even if you already have the game!

The game will also continue to be available to buy on our website, as well as from our official reseller. And of course, you can still play it on almost any computer via the NVIDIA cloud-based platform, Geforce NOW.

We will implement a free trial of Dual Universe with the game’s launch, which will be available exclusively on Steam. We’ll have more details on this in future communications, but for those who want to try the game's mechanics without committing to a subscription, we’ve got you covered! 

We will be opening a separate server for the free trial to allow anyone the chance to try the game for free without impacting the persistent server. This separate server will be regularly reset. 

The game has come a long way during these two years of beta. We want to give every player, including those of you who stopped playing before the game’s new systems and gameplay loops were introduced, a chance to try them. 

If you were subscribed to the game at any point during the beta, and your subscription has lapsed, we’re adding two weeks of game time on your account from the 27th of September. These two weeks will give you full access to the main universe. Come see what the game has to offer at launch; it’s on us!

The launch will come with some welcome additions to the game. A major one is that we’re upgrading planets. The launch is a great chance for us to bring the game's worlds to life more and to breathe more identity into them. As NQ-Sirg has described before in Ask Aphelia, we had built the Helios system for the launch of Beta and didn’t have as much time as we would have liked to make fleshed-out, living worlds.

If you want a sneak peek at some of these changes, you can see them in the replay of our launch announcement live stream.

This upgrade means you will see new biomes that feel more vibrant and alive. Players will initially have access to:  

 		Alioth + Sanctuary + Haven (+ Moon 1 + Moon 4) 	

We’ll add more improved worlds back into the game in several phases. Please note that the release order below is still subject to change. 

We are also adding more planetary body types into the game! The asteroid belts of Thades will be replaced with new, bigger asteroids which can now be claimed by players. We hope to introduce more claimable rocks around Helios after the launch. 

Whether you’ve got a small holding or a sprawling, multi-core space station, rebuilding after the reset will be easier with better blueprint deployment tools. As a reminder, you will keep your core blueprints after the reset, so we wanted to make your life easier when deploying them at launch. We have already added pre-visualization to blueprints with the ability to finely move their placement using keyboard controls. We’re also adding three new features at launch and in the first patch after the launch: 

 SNAPPING - When deploying a blueprint, you can snap to the grid of another, already placed core, like when placing a Space Core Unit. Along with pre-visualization and keyboard controls, this will allow you to perfectly align cores with one another while deploying blueprints. 	

HONEYCOMB SWAPS - You can now change any honeycomb type inside of a blueprint with any other of your choosing. 	

 ELEMENT OMISSION - You can now opt to deploy blueprints with elements missing should you lack them or to simply choose different elements to omit from deployment by choice. 	

Another addition to the launch is better cosmetics. We’re adding the much-requested purple plastic and colored luminescent honeycomb. Our newly announced Pioneer Packs will reward beta players and backers with collectible items only available to them as a thank you for helping to bring the game to life. We’re also building on the NOVEAN OVERVIEW to help players better manage their customizations and skins, with much more cosmetic and quality of life improvements to come! 

In-game Kickstarter rewards will start being rolled out at launch, and we will share details about them in a dedicated communication. It will include topics such as how to update your physical-reward delivery address and how to claim your in-game rewards. 

However, there is one piece of news that we want to share with you here. It’s an exciting time for any game developer when the project you have devoted years of your life to comes to fruition. We can already confirm that our Crowdfunding backers will be able to finally see their names in the credits at launch.  

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

Launching Dual Universe is the start of a new chapter in the game’s story, a story that we as developers and you, our community, are writing together. We still have much to do, and we’re more excited now than ever to deliver a game that can live up to Dual Universe’s incredible potential. 

If you have questions about the launch, please send them to us here so that we can answer them in a dedicated episode of Ask Aphelia. 

You can also share your thoughts and feedback with us in this dedicated forum thread. 

Thanks again to our players for an incredible journey so far. We can't wait to continue it with you. 

This is Cyrille Fontaine (NQ-Kyrios) again. I’m writing to follow up on our announcement video released earlier today. I’d encourage you to watch it if you haven’t already as it presents our decision to reset Dual Universe when we launch.

In this letter, I want to walk you through some of our reasons and give you precise answers on what you will keep after the server reset, as well as how we plan to reward Beta players for their investment in the game.

Deciding whether to reset the server of a persistent, single-shard game like Dual Universe is an enormous and challenging decision. It impacts many departments in the company, such as game design, server, live operations, production, community management, and well, pretty much everyone. But most importantly, it impacts our players. Players who have dedicated time, money, and passion to the game during beta.

But before we go any further, I want to address the elephant in the room: we started sharing information about the reset before we had solid answers because we wanted to give you clarity on our internal dialogues. Though this gave rise to many fantastic protest constructs, such as Vampskull’s intricate toilet paper ship, it also caused uncertainty for our community. I want to extend to you all a truly heartfelt apology for that and to thank you for your patience.

I’ll go through some of the factors we had to weigh below, but what lay at the heart of the decision for us was how we would reward the efforts, support, and contributions of our players during beta while still allowing new players the same opportunity to experience a fresh new solar system to settle at launch. 

Betas tend to have bugs and exploits, and Dual Universe has had its share of those. We’ve dealt with issues from item duplication and system exploits to our own missteps. We have improved our monitoring systems throughout the beta, but in order to balance our player-run economy for launch, we have to reset it.

It’s a technical necessity for us. The game has an extreme quantity of leftover and unused constructs. With changes to maximum construct slots and the Inactive Asset Requisition (IAR) system, the situation has improved, but a full reset will allow us to manage the data load well from the start without the burden of abandoned legacy constructs. With the new systems that we added during beta, data load should not become an issue again.

The game’s launch will be a fresh start with every player on the same starting line. We want to give every player, whether a veteran or new, the same opportunity to experience the thrill of colonizing Helios during the first days and weeks after launch. 

It’s also an opportunity to improve our planetary bodies in Helios. We want to give planets more identity, to implement what we didn’t have time to do when we launched the beta. We cannot do that while players are building and terraforming the planets. We also want to experiment with new types of planetary bodies, and a reset allows us to achieve these goals. More information on that will follow soon.

Almost the whole game, with a few exceptions that I’ll cover below. 

This means that everything from planets and territories to items and constructs will be reset. The game’s economy and player progression will also be reset, but we will give beta players back some of their talent points and other items through the Pioneer Packs detailed below.

As beta players, you will keep your name and contact list on the new server.

You’ll also keep your Core Blueprints after reset. Whether in a container aboard one of your constructs or inside a package, all of your Core Blueprints will be transferred to your nanopack. However, we’d recommend that you organize your Core Blueprints in your nanopack and create Core Blueprints of constructs that you would like to keep ready for the reset at launch.

You’ll also keep your organizations. Membership will be reset, but the superlegate will remain as the leader to carry the organization into launch with its name, logo, and manifesto intact. However, organizations belonging to other organizations will be erased.

Core Blueprints belonging to organizations, including those housed in containers and packages belonging to the organization will be transferred to the superlegate.

Your Two-Factor Authentication rewards will be reallocated to you after the reset. Your Recruit-a-Friend rewards will also be reallocated, with the exception of any game time rewards that you’ve already consumed.

We’ve also put together three tiers of Pioneer Packs to reward our beta players and give them back some progression, such as a portion of their talent points. They are a thank you from all of us here at Novaquark for the support you’ve shown us during the beta and the time you invested in the game.

We’ll deliver these packages during our six-month launch event in a way that preserves balance at launch and allows new players the same opportunity to compete in the game’s economy. At the start, beta veterans will be in almost the same position as new players, but by the end of these six months, beta players and backers will have one of the three packages outlined below.

This package is available to players who have purchased up to three months of subscription for the Dual Universe beta.

Up to 40,992,000 extra talent points, including the server-wide accelerator event and the beta talent point awards, by the end of the 6-month launch event.

5 Schematic copies of Dynamic Core Unit S

Tier 1 Rare Item - 1 Whirlpool collectible statue

1 exclusive decorative item: Deco potted plant white

This package is available to players who have purchased up to twelve months of subscription for the Dual Universe beta. Please note that it’s not necessary to have used the game time by this date to qualify.

This package is also available to Iron, Bronze, Silver, and Contributor backers from our crowdfunding packages.

Up to 46,992,000 extra talent points, including the server-wide accelerator event and the beta talent point awards, by the end of the 6-month launch event.

5 Schematic copies of Dynamic Core Unit M

Tier 2 Rare Item - 1 Triangulum collectible statue

2 exclusive decorative items: Deco potted plant white | Deco carpet

This package is available to players who have purchased at least thirteen months of subscription for the Dual Universe beta. Please note that it’s not necessary to have used the game time by this date to qualify for this bracket.

This package is also available to our Gold backers and above from our crowdfunding campaigns, as well as Sponsors and Patrons.

Up to 52,992,000 extra talent points, including the server-wide accelerator event and the beta talent point awards, by the end of the 6-month launch event.

5 Schematic copies of Dynamic Core Unit L

Tier 3 Rare Item - 1 Circinus collectible statue

3 exclusive decorative items: Deco potted plant white | Deco carpet | Deco potted plant black

To receive your Pioneer Packs, you’ll need an active subscription. Item rewards are also only available in the first month after release, and you’ll need to log into the game during this time to receive them. We’ll share more information soon on the server-wide talent point accelerator event, and the extra talent point awards for beta players and backers will be delivered on the last day of each month.

I want to thank all of you again for bearing with us while we resolved the reset question. We hope that the opportunity to relive the thrill of settling Helios is appealing to you. From the new first-time user experience to a whole canvas ready to be recalled to life, Dual Universe is waiting for you.

We’re also creating a special episode of Ask Aphelia about the reset. If you have questions from our announcement video or this letter, please send them to us here.

Stay tuned for more news on the future of Dual Universe, and look for our next major announcement very soon.

Creative Director's Note: Details of the Reset

Watch the video to see for yourself why Athena is a game changer:

Dual Universe Update: Athena (0.29)

SPACE TERRITORY WARFARE: We are introducing ‘Alien Space Core Units’, which you can find scattered around at various locations outside of the Safe Space zone. These Alien Cores provide resources to whoever can fight to take and hold them.

NEW FTUE: Dual Universe’s First Time User Experience has been drastically upgraded to provide players with an easier to understand, more concise and overall improved introduction to the game. The starting experience will take place on a brand-new safe moon called: Haven.

STASIS WEAPONS: Designed to reduce the maximum velocity of targeted ships, these weapons allow you to tackle those who try to swarm or out maneuver you. This will add more dynamics and possibilities to engaging in space battles across Helios.

SPACE TRAVEL SPEED BALANCES: A constructs’ mass will now impact their speed: the heavier the ship, the less its maximum speed will be. Smaller, more agile constructs can now catch up with the heavier ones!

SYSTEM MAP: our new system map gives powerful new tools to players in visualizing the Helios system with new and improved menus, filters, navigation, and more!

LUA: Athena’s Lua changes bring many community-requested features into the game.

SPACE MARKET: With the introduction of the Aegis Market, players can now directly access a bot-free market housed in the void of space, between Alioth, Madis, and Thades.

PVP VOXEL IMPROVEMENTS: We’ve improved performance when voxels are being destroyed. Thanks to the player reports we've received, we have been working hard to identify this voxel issue and have been able to improve on this system.

GRAPHICAL UPGRADE: From Blueprint Pre-Visualisation to a new Skybox, to water and warp VFX, we’ve worked hard to improve the look of the game in Athena.

A full list of what’s new in Athena is also available on our forum.

The constructive feedback we receive from our players continues to have an incredible impact on the continuing development of Dual Universe. Many of the features and changes we are bringing to the game are based on players' requests. Please continue to share your opinions!

We’ll be carefully reading your comments on this forum discussion thread.

Prepare your warships, Noveans:Athena update 0.29 has arrived in Dual Universe. The goddess of war and wisdom brings many features and improvements to the game such as contested resource hotspots in space, an improved First Time User Experience (FTUE) and many upgraded visual effects. Watch the video to see for yourself why Athena is a game changer:

Dual Universe - Panacea Update Trailer

Vertex Precision Tool: an easier way to shape voxel. Whether you’re an experienced or novice voxelmancer, you’ll enjoy this powerful new tool that makes building a breeze.

Shipwrecks in Space: Your smile will light up even the darkest corners of space when you discover one of these randomly-spawned wrecks. How will you cash in on your big find?

Inactive Assets Requisitioning: Not only will this automated system help keep Helios beautiful, it offers lucrative opportunities to salvage abandoned constructs.

Organization Constructs Slots: to address an exploit on the soft limitations of construct and territory numbers, the solution we’ve designed, with the feedback of our players, will detach construct capacity rights from organizations and put them directly into players’ hands.



Talents UI: Admire all of your impressive talents in a more efficient way.

RDMS UI: The new interface for RDMS management is so fresh, so clean!

Camera Lua API: Tap in and access more in-game camera information.

The constructive feedback we receive from our players truly has an incredible impact on the continuing development of DU. Please continue to share your opinions! We’ll be keeping a careful watch on this forum thread for your comments regarding the Panacea update. 

Who better than the goddess of remedy to be the patron of the latest Dual Universe update? Panacea (0.28) has a hardy mix of new features as well as corrective improvements based on player feedback..

Terrain Update - The many changes and new features in Demeter came hand-in-hand with the integration of new tech for voxels on planets called hexoctree, which helps with data storage and performance. 

Mining Optimization - With the release of Demeter, we have decided to do away with the tedium of manual mining for resource gathering. Players may still wish to do some fancy terraforming to shape their territories to their taste, but they no longer need to do bowl-of-spaghetti-like tunneling. The mining units introduced in Demeter changed the dynamic by fully automating mining operations through the use of mining units that can pull from infinite pools of resources. You’ll also score an adjacency bonus for running mining units on your adjoining territories. Get the full scoop in the Mining Units 101 devblog.


Territory Management - Changes to territory management provide more balanced land ownership, with territories now requiring the payment of weekly taxes. Unless it is marked as headquarters, the territory goes into an abandoned state when taxes go unpaid for a period of time, allowing for the requisition of static constructs deserted by the previous owner. This presents lucrative salvaging opportunities for cunning players who seek them out. The Territory Upkeep devblog will give you more details on claiming territory, declaring your headquarters, and how to score cast-off constructs:

Visual Improvements - We’ve made significant improvements to the biomes of some planets. With Demeter, the biomes of both Jago and Teoma received impressive makeovers with new flora, fauna, and even a covering of snow in some locations. The addition of ambient effects, such as butterflies, provides lovely, ambient touches that breathe life into Helios.

Important note: The territory changes include a geometry reset that will remove underground tunnels. Subterranean constructs will still be there but will be encased. Players may choose to excavate their constructs themselves or may contact Support for assistance. See Prepping for the Geo Reset for more information.

A full list of the improvements and changes in Demeter is available here. 

Demeter, our sixth major update of the year, was published today. And when we say “major”, we mean really, really super big game-changing major. 

Lua is a real and easy-to-learn programming language that can be used in DU to bring functionality and usability to constructs, such as making ships fly, doors open and close, and screens display graphics. For a more in-depth look at the various Lua components in Selene, we published “Lua Improvements and Changes”, a three-part devblog. (See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.) If you’re not familiar with Lua scripting, we hope this update will inspire you to give it a try.

We would also like to highlight these very important container RDMS changes:

The “Use Element” right will no longer provide full access to all containers. Instead, the following RDMS rights will be the sole governors of who has access to containers.

Put items in container - Allows an actor to place items into a container

Retrieve items from container - Allows an actor to take items from a container

View container contents - Allows an actor to view the content of a container. (This right is implicitly given with the Put & Retrieve rights.)

This change will affect all container types: containers, fuel tanks, ammunition containers, and Mission containers.

Alongside the Lua goodies and container changes, the Selene update also includes several improvements and bug fixes. View the full changelog here.

Questions or comments about the update? Warp over to the forums. We’d love to hear from you. 

The Dual Universe creator community will be delighted to dive into the latest update. Named for the goddess of the Moon, Selene (0.26.17) shines with new Lua-related features and improvements that players can integrate into their constructs to bring them to new heights.

Building the metaverse, one voxel at a time

DUAL UNIVERSE LAUNCH DATE

Creative Director's Note: Details of the Reset

Athena (0.29) update now available

Demeter (0.27) update now available

Selena (0.26.17) UPDATE NOW AVAILABLE

LET’s STAY IN TOUCH