Games Porting
Five Nights At Freddy’s
Pingle and Steel Wool Studios Team Up on 12 Projects to Expand the Legendary Franchise
Read More
/ Games Porting /
Lost Ember
Launches on PS4, Xbox One, and PC in 4 Months
88%
rating
on Steam
70/100
score
on Metacritic
250,000+
copies
sold
/ Testimonials /
The nature adventure that's winning rave reviews
PC Gamer
90/100
Lost Ember is a wonderful, unique, and unforgettable experience with a love for nature.
Playstation Lifestyle
9.5/10
A heartbreaking tale expertly told [...].
Metacritic
80/100
Lost Ember is an evocative and poetic adventure [...]; among other things, supported by a good gameplay.
wccftech
8/10
The entire design of the game is used perfectly to awe-inspire the player and give them the chance to explore at their own pace.
/ Project overview /
Pingle & Mooneye Studios
About the game
Lost Ember is an atmospheric single-player adventure game by Mooneye Studios. You get to play asl a wolf who can possess other animals to traverse diverse terrains, from deserts to jungles and ancient ruins. Its first release targeted Windows, PS4, and Xbox One.
Client
Mooneye Studios
Solution
Porting
Level design
Engine
Unreal Engine 4
Platforms
Release
November 22, 2019
Partnership timeline
2019
About Pingle & Mooneye Studios partnership
Mooneye Studios partnered with Pingle to bring their Lost Ember to PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Being new to console development, Mooneye relied on us to navigate platform-specific quirks, optimize performance, balance visuals, and fine-tune controls.
/ The Challenge /
Bringing a resource-intensive game to multiple platforms
Lost Ember uses high-detail assets, translucent materials, large particle effects, and expansive scenes. It makes the game look amazing. And tricky to port. We had to work with memory constraints, GPU/CPU throughput, and overall limited hardware capabilities:
- Optimize large scenes and simplify complex shaders to prevent load failures, memory leaks, and stuttering across consoles.
- Tailor performance settings for different console models, like PS4 Slim vs Pro.
- Clean up unused meshes, remove redundant parent materials, and streamline spawn logic to reduce memory usage and eliminate platform-specific bugs.
Have a similar challenge?
We can help!
/ Phase 1 /
Hunting down FPS killers
The game struggled with slowdowns and unstable performance depending on the platform. So, in the early weeks, we pinpointed the main causes of frame-rate drops and performance issues:
1
Defined task pools and prioritized workload
2
Measured CPU, GPU, and game thread loads to classify FPS sinks
3
Instrumented profiling per console variant
It gave us a clear plan for all the optimizations that followed.
/ Phase 2 /
Pixel tuning for every console
The game’s graphically intensive assets and lighting effects looked stunning on PC but pushed console hardware beyond its limits. To deliver smooth gameplay without losing the game’s visual charm, we adjusted graphics features to better match each console’s capabilities.
1
Manually selected heavy shaders and replaced them with simpler variants
2
Applied enhanced levels of detail (LOD) to distant or less important objects
3
Reduced illumination, shading, and ambient occlusion (AO) quality
4
Lowered landscape tessellation levels and draw distances
5
Introduced dynamic resolution & INI-based config tuning per console
6
Deployed conditional material switches for weaker models
/ Phase 3 /
Optimizing game assets and logic for stable performance
The original build contained unnecessary meshes, parent materials, and redundant content that increased system load and introduced visual bugs. In certain locations, this led to freezes and memory leaks.
To tackle these issues, we optimized problematic assets and logic.
1
Audited and removed unused meshes, parent materials, or redundant content
2
Fixed or removed problematic actor spawns and skeletal mesh usage
3
Addressed memory leaks and freeze-causing logic in key scenes
4
Performed testing to confirm stable frame behavior across console models
/ The results /
Lost Ember performs flawlessly on PS4, Xbox One Series and PC
Before
After
UE4 title unprepared for multi-platform release
Console-ready builds tuned per platform + PC
Frequent memory leaks, freezes, and performance drops
Stable frame rates, no stutters or crash issues
One-size-fits-all asset pipeline
Platform-specific LODs, material variants, and dynamic resolution
Unoptimized, hardware-heavy content
Cleaned, audited assets without any redundant content
/ The team /
Cast
- 2 developers
- Technical Artist
- Game Tester
/ Cases /
Explore more case studies
From technically demanding titles to stylistically unique games, we've helped dozens of developers scale their games’ success on new platforms. In record times.
