Noodle Cat Games

Noodle Cat Games is an independent video game development studio founded in 2022 by veterans of Epic Games, Electronic Arts, BioWare, Codemasters, Disney, PopCap and Cryptic. It is led by CEO and founder David Ryan Hunt, who spent about twenty years in game design including nearly a decade at Epic Games working on Fortnite, alongside co-founders Michael Noland (CTO, formerly an Epic principal programmer) and Ed Zobrist (business advisor, formerly Epic's head of publishing). The team has held leadership roles on titles including Fortnite, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Infinity Blade.

The studio's debut title is Cloudheim, a cooperative multiplayer action RPG set in a Norse-inspired world, playable solo or in up to four-player online co-op from a flying turtle base called Odin Shell. The game combines visual crafting with physics-based combat and is described as launching in 2025 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Beyond its games, Noodle Cat positions itself around an alternative development model intended to avoid industry crunch, with a fully remote structure, a four-day work week and a flat organizational hierarchy.

Founding story

David Ryan Hunt left a designer role at Epic Games, after prior stints at Cryptic and BioWare and roughly twenty years in the industry, to start Noodle Cat Games with other veteran developers from Epic Games, PopCap and EA. His stated motivation was the industry's reliance on personal sacrifice and overwork to ship games — including the loss of a friend and mentor to heart failure attributed to overwork — and a desire to apply iterative, research-driven improvement to how games are made rather than only to the games themselves.

Business model

The studio develops original intellectual property for release on PC and consoles, funded to date through venture capital and strategic investment from gaming companies and funds.

Traction

The studio had grown to roughly 20 developers and raised a total of $16.1 million across a 2022 seed round and a 2023 Series A. Its first title, Cloudheim, reached launch status for 2025 across PC and current-generation consoles and received coverage from outlets such as Saving Content along with a 2025 Game Changer designation.

Latest developments

Following the Series A, the studio announced Cloudheim, a co-op action RPG for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S launching in 2025, and was named a 2025 Game Changer. As of the most recent listing, it had no open positions advertised.