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Owlchemy Labs founders launch new absurd:joy studio & reveal first project, Tangle

Absurd:joy was built to bring creative, fun, and effective interactivity to remote office collaboration and Tangle will be an extension of that goal.

TJ Denzer

August 24, 2021 9:20 AM

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We know Owlchemy Labs as the group that has poured its effort into VR development on titles such as Job Simulator, Vacation Simulator, and Rick & Morty: Virtual Rick-ality. However, a founder and former director of Owlchemy have split off and come together to focus on something else. With the opinion that the tech industry has not put a lot of work into evolving remote collaboration and meeting technology, absurd:joy was formed to address that very matter, and the studio has revealed its new virtual office and remote collaboration project in Tangle.

The absurd:joy studio and its ongoing project, Tangle, were revealed in a press release on August 24, 2021. Formed by former Owlchemy Labs leadership Cy Wise and Alex Schwartz, the absurd:joy studio was originally founded as a remote studio, much the way Owlchemy was formed. However, after looking around at remote office collaboration options and finding them too impersonal, the absurd:joy team came up with Tangle in order to offer a far more engaging virtual office collaboration experience. Tangle was originally created for absurd:joy alone before the studio realized how useful it would be to others.

To that end, Tangle has already been funded and has been in closed beta for some time. The app has been utilized by the likes of Bad Robot Games, Squanch Games, Lightforge Games, Skymap Games, and more in their own ongoing projects.

Tangle will remain in various beta forms over the course of 2021 as the team focuses on sprucing up new features, refining engagement and UI, and bringing stability to the overall app for whoever uses it. That said, if all goes well, absurd:joy aims to offer the app to the public in early 2022. With options such as Slack, Zoom, and Google Meet leaving a lot to be desired, here’s hoping Tangle offers as much creative utility as absurd:joy intends it to have. Stay tuned as we continue to follow it for further information or check out the closed beta page to make a request for early access.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.