Independent game studio · Shoreditch, London
We build worlds that outlast the arcade.
Shadow Artifact Empire is a Shoreditch game studio crafting narrative-driven titles — from first whitebox to console launch. We ship on Unreal 5 and Unity 6, with a live-ops crew that keeps players coming back long after release.
- Titles shipped since 2016
- 14
- Players across our catalogue
- 3.4M
Titles shipped since 2016
Players across our catalogue
The studio
Ten years above a coffee roaster on Curtain Road.
We started as three developers renting a mezzanine over a roastery in Shoreditch. We still hand-roast our own builds — nightly, on real hardware — and we still argue about frame pacing at the same long oak table.
- 2016
Founded on Curtain Road
Three ex-console engineers opened the studio above a coffee roaster in EC2A, funded by a single work-for-hire porting contract.
- 2018
First self-published title
“Dune Cartographer” launched on PC to a 91% player rating and paid back its budget in eleven weeks.
- 2020
Live-ops team formed
We built an in-house backend group to run seasons, events, and telemetry so our worlds keep breathing after launch day.
- 2023
Console partnership programme
Certified porting pipeline for PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch — average certification pass on first submission across six titles.
Concept to shipped
Drag the slider — see how far a frame travels.
Every screen begins as a grey whitebox. These are real before/after frames from titles in our catalogue, from first blockout to final lit pass.
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ShippedWhitebox
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What we do
Full-stack game development, under one roof.
No outsourced black boxes. Design, engineering, art, and live-ops sit in the same room in Shoreditch and ship as one team.
We shape the loop before we write a line of code — systems design, economy tuning, and branching narrative written by our in-house writers. You leave a discovery sprint with a playable paper prototype and a signed design bible.
Gameplay programming, custom tooling, and performance work by engineers who have shipped on console. We build editor tools your team keeps, not throwaway scaffolding, and we profile on real target hardware every night.
Concept, 3D, and animation grounded in a consistent art direction — our desert-modernism environment work is a house speciality. Stylised or photoreal, we deliver optimised assets with clean LODs and documented material setups.
Authoritative netcode, matchmaking, and a backend that survives launch day. Our live-ops crew runs seasons, events, and A/B tests, with telemetry dashboards so you can read your world instead of guessing at it.
Structured test passes, a certified submission pipeline, and platform compliance for PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch. Six of our last titles passed first-party certification on their first submission.
Voices
Studios and publishers we have built alongside.
A few words from the producers, founders, and platform partners we have shipped with.
“They took our messy prototype and returned a shippable vertical slice in ten weeks. The nightly console builds meant we never hit a nasty surprise at cert.”
“The live-ops team rebuilt our season backend and our day-30 retention jumped from 12% to 27%. They actually read the telemetry with us every Monday.”
“Their environment artists nailed a sun-bleached desert look we had failed to brief three vendors on. First internal review, near enough approved.”
“We handed them a Unity title for a Switch port. Certified first submission, shipped on schedule, and the performance capture notes were genuinely useful.”
Engagements
Ways to work with the studio.
Fixed-scope for well-defined milestones, or a monthly retainer when you want a dedicated pod embedded with your team. All prices exclude VAT.
Prototype
Prove the loop is fun before you commit a budget.
- Discovery sprint & design bible
- Playable whitebox prototype
- Single core mechanic, vertical focus
- Weekly build & review
Studio
A dedicated pod taking your title to a vertical slice.
- Design, engineering & art pod
- Nightly builds on target hardware
- Vertical slice to publisher standard
- Fortnightly milestone demos
- Shared telemetry dashboard
Empire
Full production and live-ops through launch and beyond.
- Full production team & producer
- Multiplayer backend & live-ops
- Console certification & porting
- Post-launch seasons & events
- On-call launch support
Start a build
Tell us about your world.
Send us the pitch — a paragraph or a 60-page bible, we read both. We reply to every serious enquiry within two working days.
- Phone+44 20 7739 3920
- Email[email protected]
- Studio92 Curtain Road, Shoreditch, London EC2A 3AH
- Studio hoursMon–Fri, 10:00–18:00 GMT
92 Curtain Road, Shoreditch, London EC2A 3AH
Find us on Curtain Road, a two-minute walk from Old Street station.