Noa The GameAbout us
Noa The Game is a Swedish digital co-op game for building individual habits, together. The game was founded by Fredrik Brännlund.
Who is Noa?
Noa is a neuron. A nerve cell, that is.
The character was born long before the app. Fredrik and his mother sewed a neuron in fabric for a dear friend's baby shower, a girl, so it was named Nora the Neuron. Then they kept playing with the idea and started writing children's books about her.
The distinctive neuron stayed with Fredrik as a symbolic insight: a habit is not an abstract idea about discipline, the neuron is something physical that gets built in the brain, connection by connection. When Fredrik turned his own life around, that insight was what carried him through heavy days — he only needed to maintain the physical connection being built in his brain, and it would get easier with time.
In the game, Noa is the one who greets you, helps you get started and guides you until you've built your own nerve connection. The game was named after the character, to carry that symbolism on to other players.
The story.
The method started in the fall of 2020 inside ENV Media, Fredrik's own company, under the name Watering Together. Even then the image was the same: you plant a seed, water it, tend it and iterate as the habit grows. Why "together"? Because everyone did this individually, their own individual habit, but they did it together.
Two years later it had changed the company at its core, and Fredrik decided to build it as a product.The case is here →
Then came the expensive lesson. The company behind Noa quickly grew into a team of ten, in under a year. The technology became too complex and too slow to evolve with the players. Many millions later it was clear everything had to be torn down and rebuilt, simpler. That's the version you meet today.
And why it became a game? That wasn't the original idea. The players who tested it asked for it, and Fredrik had ten years of experience in game development, so it became the natural path. One of the early testers described the method as "a cheat code to connecting with the human behind the colleague".
Why we exist.
We help people establish habits. That's the whole mission, and every tool and feature we build is developed with that in mind.
And underneath it all lies the thought the whole method rests on: build yourself for the people you love. So your partner gets a stronger partner, who is you. So your kids get a stronger parent.
We take care of ourselves to be able to be something for others.
Fredrik Brännlund.
Entrepreneur since the age of 19. Has built and sold companies, paid salaries to many dozens of people, and run ENV Media fully remote across nine time zones. Fredrik comes from the gaming industry and counts game psychology and board games as both professional and personal passions. He created the method behind Noa inside his own company and today speaks about habits, energy and engagement.Book him here →
I've spent five years on this now, and I'm still here for one single reason: I've seen what happens when people establish new habits together. We expand at the core. This is what I'm meant to do. I've found my calling, I'm home now.
— Fredrik
Contact us.
Book half an hour and we'll look at your situation together, or just write a few lines. No ten-field forms, we'd rather read your sentence than your checkboxes.
[Email coming] · LinkedIn: Fredrik Brännlund