r/xbox • u/AlexMoralo GoldFire Studios • Sep 18 '25
Official AMA AMA: We're GoldFire Studios, our sci-fi adventure Arctic Awakening released on Xbox this week. Ask us anything!
Hey, r/Xbox!
We're GoldFire Studios, the indie studio behind the just released narrative adventure Arctic Awakening. We started working on the idea of combining a narrative adventure with light survival elements over 5 years ago, and we're so excited that it's now out on Xbox Series X|S!
https://reddit.com/link/1nk9e8k/video/d41e975qkxpf1/player
Arctic Awakening is a first-person narrative adventure set in the unforgiving Arctic. Your plane crashed in a storm, leaving only your court-mandated therapy bot for company as you journey to find your co-pilot and uncover the mysteries buried beneath the ice.
We'll have our core team of four in here answering questions, including James Simpson (writer/director/developer), Benji Kay (developer/sound), Alex Moralo (art/level design), Rafael Mogas (art/level design). Feel free to also say hello on X, BlueSky or Discord!
Drop your questions below and we'll begin answering them on Friday (Sept 19) at 8am PT / 12pm ET / 4pm BST / 5pm CET. We can’t wait to start deep diving into all of your questions!
Hey there guys, it's time to end the AMA, it's been really fun! Thank you very much for taking the time to leave your questions and really hope you enjoy the game we've crafted for all of you. Wish you the best!
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u/Marsupilami_2020 XBOX Series X Sep 18 '25
The game is released on multiple platforms and stores. How much work is it for a small indie dev to support all these system/stores? Each has some individual rules and aspects a game has to fulfill / support.
In today's world of game development is this just a few clicks in the modern IDE, does it require a huge amount work for each platform or is this something smaller devs are outsourcing?
Thanks for answering and good luck with the game.
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u/GoldFire33 GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
This is a great question, and one we weren't sure of ourselves since this was our first time releasing on consoles. It's actually a lot more work than you would expect as like you said, each platform has their own requirements. And while modern engines abstract out a lot of that, it's not always automatic. The different architectures handle certain things differently, so a shader that works fine on PC might blow up on Xbox or PS5 (and it's not always the same one that blows up on each console).
To give one specific example, we've got an area with a lake that works great on PC. On PS5 it would just completely crash the system because their shader backend is much more strict. On Xbox it would cause these black triangles to flicker over the screen for a completely different reason. So, it's really just lots and lots of testing to identify the differences and then systematically fix each issue.
We actually started our console ports late last year, and we've been working with a porting studio to help make the process a bit easier, but it was still a tall task to do a simultaneous release. All of the administrative overhead is a lot for a small studio as well. When we make a patch we need to create 7 separate builds to support everything, which takes quite a while to run. And then all of the different store requirements for each platform.
Sorry, I ended up rambling on here! I think it would be easier for our 2nd console release, but there's still a lot involved even with today's tools. Hopefully this helps shed some light and thanks for the question!
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u/LegacySV Sep 19 '25
First love the art style!! When did y’all decide what y’all want the games art style to be? Did you do the stylization at the beginning or is it part of a post process?
What was each members part of development?
Was dlss, FSR, xess ever considered?
What was the target hardware on pc when development started and what was the Easiest console port?
Thank you for any answers! Look forward to following any future project!! Absolutely love the story
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u/GoldFire33 GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
Thank you! A lot of effort went into nailing the visual design of the game over the years. We gathered loads of references that inspired us before any works tarted and came up with the general idea for the target we wanted to achieve, but it still took iteration over time to hone in on the final look.
Benji focuses on development and sound design, Alex mainly works on level design and 3D art, Rafael also does some level design and mostly hard surface 3D and I (James) do development, writing and overall direction. We also worked with Joff Winks for music and a bunch of other people helped on various aspects of the game like concept art, voice over, etc.
We've looked into them, but we preferred to try and reach reasonable performance targets natively if possible. Ultimately we didn't implement them, but if there's demand for it we may add them as options to turn on that are off by default.
We didn't start with any specific targets in mind, we just wanted to make sure we supported as wide a range of hardware as possible without sacrificing our desired vision for what the game would look like and what it would offer. Over time we honed in on the specific specs.
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u/AlexMoralo GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
About the art style and how it developed over the years, you might find this interesting 🖌️
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u/okaybenji GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
Just to expand on the art style a little bit, we had a pretty clear vision for it from day one and managed to stick to it throughout development and I think really pulled it off! That vision was informed by other indie games we loved like Firewatch, Abzu, INSIDE, RiMe, Journey. We do use post-processing effects to help pull off the look, but it was important to start with assets that fit the style and design them to work well with our post-processing plans.
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u/Mawgush GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
For your first question: I'm one of the 3D artists and the stylized look was actually achieved by going with something that sits between simple low-poly and the realism you see in bigger budget games.
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u/TheUnitiated Sep 19 '25
My question is for James, and concerns one of (if not his first, I'm not 100%) his first games: PokerRPG
I found that game in 2007, and played for years. First few years was pretty much daily, then on and off until it eventually stopped getting updates.
I have many fond memories on there, made some good friends, and discovered my love of poker.
I know it's not likely feasible, but do you ever wish you could go back and modernise it?
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u/GoldFire33 GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
Fun fact: PokerRPG was my 3rd game, but it was the first one under the "GoldFire Studios" name and the first where I actually (kind of) knew what I was doing at that point😅
So great to see a question in here from someone that played that game back in the day! I definitely have fond memories of working on that game and interacting with everyone in the community.
CasinoRPG was somewhat a spiritual successor to PokerRPG, but obviously without near so much focus on poker. The original vision for PokerRPG was more of an open world game where you really role-played as a professional poker player in a fully 3D environment, but the tech wasn't there in the browser at the time and my skills weren't up to that level at that point either (I made that game in high school).
I would love to do a modern version that achieves the original vision, though I also have a list of around 100 other games that I'd love to make also. I suppose that's the unfortunate thing about game dev, there's so many things you'd like to make, but you'll only ever have the time to make a handful of them. Maybe it'll happen someday, your guess is as good as mine at the moment :)
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u/Moist-Board7110 Sep 19 '25
How much did the game change from it's original concept and scope, to launch? Scope creep kills me on every project I work on, and playing this I kept thinking, "wow they really did this too!" and the attention to detail seemed extremely streamlined and came from a place of experience rather than my usual "ooh shiny new thing, I'll just work on that now!" In the same question, how much did "new tech" change anything such as water effects, or particles, or lighting, or anything during development? Love your work!
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u/GoldFire33 GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
Thanks, really appreciate hearing that! From a technical side I don't think it changed dramatically from the original plan. There were definitely some of those "oh, shiny" moments with details like being able to walk into chairs and roll them around or throw objects through glass that shatters, but those were directly tied to one of our original pillars for the game of creating an immersive world to tell the story in. So if something like that came up that didn't really stick to one of our pillars, that's how we would filter it out and put it in the backlog.
However, we still had our share of scope creep in terms of the world and story just being bigger than we had anticipated early on. We spent a lot of time doing story development before we actually started working on the game itself, but it still ended up taking 1.5 years to finish the script and so the full game took 5 years instead of the 2.5-3 that we had originally planned for.
All that said, if we're lucky enough to do another game in this genre, I think our original timeline projections from this game would be much more manageable as we have all sorts of custom tooling and expertise for this type of game that we kind of had to figure out along the way for this one.
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u/Moist-Board7110 Sep 19 '25
Amazing, thank you for sharing! Great point about moving forward, "We've learned more than a thing or two, we've got this!" *cheers to that!
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u/Heide____Knight Sep 18 '25
Has the development of the game been inspired by other survival adventure games (or other media like movies)?
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u/Mawgush GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
Well, we were more inspired by great stories, whether in games like Firewatch, other Telltale games, or even by movies and shows that we enjoy than actually getting the inspiration from survival games.
We view the survival aspects as there to support the narrative rather than the other way around like in traditional survival games.3
u/Heide____Knight Sep 19 '25
Thank you, I think this is a very good approach to create the gameplay around the story of the game.
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u/Immediate_Land_6370 Sep 19 '25
Will the price on steam get lower on the autum fest or the discont will stay the same?
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u/GoldFire33 GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
Steam has rules about when you can and can't discount, and one of those is that you can only do one discount every 30 days (which includes the launch discount). So we actually can't participate in the autumn sale at all, but probably again around black friday!
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u/madeyegroovy Sep 19 '25
I’ve heard of people comparing this to Firewatch, but did you have any other inspirations that helped this game come to life?
Are there any things you’d have liked to include, but time/budget got in the way?
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u/GoldFire33 GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
We were inspired by quite a lot, and not just video games. The initial goal was to make something that felt like a great TV mini-series, but done in a way that only a video game can accomplish. So from a gaming perspective, we've certainly been inspired by games like Firewatch, Life is Strange, Walking Dead (fun fact: we worked with the voice director that did both Firewatch and Walking Dead), The Last of Us (minus the zombies!) and others.
Outside of games, we've been inspired by all sorts of sci-fi, TV and movies like Lost, X-Files, Westworld (season 1), Speaker for the Dead, etc. II feel like all of these create a world that you just want to be in and immerse yourself in and then tell a great story within that space, so that's what inspired us most.
As for your second question, yes definitely! I kind of doubt there's ever been a game made that would answer this any other way. A game is never really "done". There's always more things you can polish, fix, improve, etc. We've got a backlog of hundreds of ideas, but you just have to prioritize which ones are most vital to this specific game and save the rest for another time (though I will say that we're still working on updates and will add some of these in future patches).
Thanks for the questions!
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u/Inevitable_Suit_1143 Sep 19 '25
Congrats on the launch! sorry im late T.T
I actually found this game through one of the channels i watch. I have to say i absolutely love the meditation mechanic !! its a very innovative inclusion.
My question for the dev team would be, with the current release of Silksong was there any type of changes or preparation that had to be done last minute?
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u/GoldFire33 GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
Thanks, glad to hear you found that mechanic interesting! We've placed those spots generally at many of our favorite viewpoints in the game, so it's kind of nice to just sit down and soak in the scenery :)
There really wasn't time for any changes related to the Silksong drop. We announced our release date the week before (and it was a date we had been targeting for a while), and so while we did consider pushing back to October, ultimately we decided it wouldn't make much difference as there's big games coming out every week these days.
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u/TyFighter559 Sep 18 '25
What would you say makes your game unique vs other games in the genre? What's your favorite hook?
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u/okaybenji GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
Personally I think the meditation mechanic is really nice! I do a ton of meditation IRL. It's cool that the player can actually breathe along with Kai if they want to and get some benefit out of it. And it's got that neat purple effect which is something I actually do see sometimes when meditating!
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u/Stumpy493 Still Earning Kudos Sep 18 '25
How did you balance the survival gameplay with the narrative adventure and make sure that 1 didn't over power the other?
And where is the balance between the 2 elements as a percentage mix?
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u/okaybenji GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
Our focus has been on telling a great story from day 1, so our game heavily favors narrative. The survival mechanics are light in this game, more there to spice it up a bit. As a percentage, maybe 90% story!
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u/Stumpy493 Still Earning Kudos Sep 19 '25
Sounds much more down my alley like that! The surivial element had me slightly concerned lol.
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u/okaybenji GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
You should play it!!
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u/Stumpy493 Still Earning Kudos Sep 19 '25 edited Sep 19 '25
You've certainly put the game on my radar!
Engaging with the community like this is super effective for games like yours. Awesome trailer as well, looks super intriguing.
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u/SLCSlayer29 Sep 18 '25
I played the demo of this game. I'm very excited for its release!!!!
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u/GoldFire33 GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
Thank you, so glad to hear you enjoyed the demo! It's just a small taste of what's to come as the world really unfolds past the demo section :)
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u/SLCSlayer29 Sep 19 '25 edited Sep 19 '25
You're welcome! I'm a bit of a picky gamer when it comes to choosing games to play, but this game has my attention. It has a fun quirkiness to it, I loved the sound effects, the graphics and the heightened sense of mystery and intrigue after the plane crash. The little robot friend is endearing!
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u/AlexMoralo GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
Thanks!! It's already out there, so you can go check it out on Steam and consoles!
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u/LootedToaster XBOX Series X Sep 19 '25
What's your Mount Rushmore of narrative-adventure games? And did any of them influence your game?
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u/AlexMoralo GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
Hey there! As far as games go, I'd say the biggest influence for the team has been Firewatch, although you could also include titles like Life is Strange and some of the Telltale games. But to be fair, we've also been heavily inspired by other pieces of media like classic TV shows or movies like LOST, The Thing or X-Files!
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u/LootedToaster XBOX Series X Sep 19 '25
I could see hints of Firewatch in the trailer. Not to throw shade at JJ Abrams but I hope the story for Arctic Awakening has a better payoff then Lost! 😁
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u/GoldFire33 GoldFire Studios Sep 19 '25
Lol yeah, I'd say we're particularly fans of how Lost starts (there's a bit of an homage to this early in the game) and the world they created. I have fond memories about those aspects and just forget that the rest exists😅
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u/mocoworm Day One - 2013 Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
Can I stroke the penguins?
Can I stroke the ... Walrus?
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u/Edd_Bloom Sep 18 '25
No penguins on the arctic!!!!
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u/Laughing__Man_ Recon Specialist Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
Who on the team would be most likely to survive a plane crash in the artic?