Cryo was formed by members of
ERE Informatique who left
Infogrames (proprietor of ERE since 1986) – among these were
Philippe Ulrich, Rémi Herbulot and Jean-Martial Lefranc. The first game developed under the Cryo Interactive moniker was the hit
Dune, which granted the newly formed software company both publicity and funding for further games under
Virgin until 1996, when Cryo started self-publishing inside the European market, and in North America through then partially owned Canadian publisher
DreamCatcher Interactive. Cryo made its name mostly through adaptations of already existing
stories (such as
Riverworld, based on
Philip José Farmer's
novel and
Ubik by
Philip K. Dick) or those based on historical scenarios (like
KGB, a game set days before the
dissolution of the Soviet Union and several games based in
Ancient Egypt,
Qing Dynasty's
China and
Louis XIV's
France, developed with Cryo's
Omni3D engine). Although most of the post-Virgin games managed to capture and stay true to the original settings, poor interfaces and the lack of worldwide distribution turned little profit from each game. By 1997, Cryo had experienced success in the US and France, and wanted to expand into Japan. It had focused its efforts on the US because it was a big market, and experienced difficulties in Japan due to changing distributors between games. They considered creating different sets of characters for the three markets, and setting up a US-based subsidiary.
Cryo Networks A Cryo Interactive subsidiary called Cryo Networks, aimed at developing and publishing online applications exclusively, was established in December 1997. Aside from online
multiplayer games (
Deo Gratias,
FireTeam,
Treasure Hunt 2001,
Mankind and
Scotland Yard being some of the titles released under this label), Cryo Networks also maintained a proprietary online multimedia development framework named SCOL (Standard Cryo On Line).
Cryo Studios North America Cryo Studios North America was a video game design studio based in
Portland,
Oregon,
USA, and was a subsidiary of Cryo Interactive. Cryo Studios was founded as Dark Horse Interactive (DHI) in the late 1990s, a joint venture of Cryo Interactive and
Dark Horse Comics, and based in Dark Horse's headquarters in
Milwaukie, Oregon. In 1999, Cryo Interactive bought out Dark Horse's share of DHI and renamed it Cryo Studios, relocating its offices to the Central Eastside Industrial District of Portland. Cryo Studios existed entirely as Cryo Interactive's American subsidiary, producing games based on licensed properties. Their first license (as DHI) was based on
MTV's animated science fiction series
Aeon Flux. However, the license agreement was terminated before development was completed and the game was re-adapted into its own fictional universe as
Pax Corpus. Shortly afterwards, DHI was granted the license to develop an interactive game based on Dark Horse's own comic book series,
Hellboy, written and drawn by
Mike Mignola. The
Windows version of
Hellboy: Dogs of the Night was completed in 2000 after nearly four years of production; the intended
PlayStation version of this game was put on ice. Their next project was to be based on
Universal Classic Monsters, which included
Dracula,
Frankenstein, and
The Wolf Man. However, before any project made it out of pre-production, Cryo Interactivequickly succumbing to the worldwide
recession of 2001closed its North American branch. consequently filing for
insolvency and making over 80 percent of its workforce redundant. Subsidiary Cryo Networks ceased operations shortly thereafter, leaving its then-ongoing projects
DUNE Generations and
Black Moon Chronicles: Wind of War unfinished. In October 2002, the parent company was put on liquidation, but subsequent negotiations ultimately caused
DreamCatcher Interactive to absorb most of its assets and development teams, thus forming the base for DreamCatcher Europe. The SCOL technology developed by Cryo Networks was released as an
open source project in late 2002. Also following Cryo's bankruptcy, its partnership with Italian developer
Trecision fell through and Trecision managed to acquire publishing rights to its co-developed games
Popeye: Hush Rush for Spinach and the
Windows and
PlayStation 2 versions of
Zidane Football Generation. However, the former was cancelled and the latter was stripped of its
Zinedine Zidane license and released as
Calcio 2003 in Italy and
Football Generation in the rest of Europe, the PlayStation 2 version not being released until 2006, three years after Trecision itself had filed for voluntary liquidation. Between 2003 and 2006, DreamCatcher division
The Adventure Company released
Salammbo: Battle for Carthage, in development at Cryo Interactive at the time it went bankrupt and completed posthumously, as well as new sequels in the Cryo trademark series of
Atlantis and
Egypt 1156 B.C.. DreamCatcher also completed the
PlayStation version of
Hellboy: Dogs of the Night, originally developed for Windows by Cryo Studios, and released it as
Hellboy: Asylum Seeker in 2004, to coincide with the release of the
first feature film of the franchise. DreamCatcher was acquired by Austrian publisher
JoWooD Productions in November 2006. By March 2007, the company downsized DreamCatcher Europe to a publishing brand only and laid off its remaining development staff, effectively ending the Cryo legacy. On 20 October 2008
Microïds acquired the brands and
intellectual property of Cryo Interactive. Microïds also stated that it intended to distribute Cryo's older games digitally, and that it was developing new games based on Cryo's intellectual properties. Since the acquisition of Microïds by
Anuman Interactive in November 2009, one game from the Cryo franchises that Anuman has planned for release is a sequel to
Egypt III. As of December 2013,
GOG.com had seven Cryo-developed games made available under its digital distribution service, namely
Dragon Lore and the
MegaRace and
Atlantis series. == Critical reception ==