IMPS
ACCEPTING — 2026
▸ CASE STUDY · 2026 · GAME

Ember.
A small fire, tended quietly.

A played-in-one-sitting narrative game about keeping a fire lit through a long night. Built in Godot. Shipped on Steam.

6 monthsBUILD TIME
Godot 4ENGINE
Steam · itchPLATFORMS
2 peopleTEAM
2026SHIPPED
KEY ART · PLACEHOLDER
EMBER

  OVERVIEW

WHAT WE MADE
// the brief

A friend was building a short interactive short-story and wanted a prototype that felt alive without looking busy. We took it the rest of the way.

Ember is a thirty-minute narrative game about a traveler who stops at an abandoned cabin on the coldest night of the year. You keep the fire lit. You read the letters left behind. Morning comes, or it doesn’t.

The whole thing runs on one mechanic — feeding the fire — and a small library of handwritten letters. No menus. No tutorial. No combat. It ships in English and Portuguese.

  SCREENS

FROM THE BUILD
01THE HEARTHscreenshot · placeholder
02LETTERSscreenshot · placeholder
03MORNINGscreenshot · placeholder
04NIGHTscreenshot · placeholder

  APPROACH

HOW WE BUILT IT
CHALLENGE

Make a tiny loop feel lived-in.

A one-mechanic game lives or dies on texture. Feeding a fire is inert on paper — it needed enough tactile and emotional variety to carry thirty minutes without a single menu.

  • No HUD, no tutorial, no backtracking
  • Reading should feel like a pause, not a chore
  • Runs on low-spec hardware, Steam Deck included
SOLUTION

Sound first. Then light. Then words.

We built the audio before the visuals — wind, hearth-crackle, and breath — so the fire had a voice before it had a sprite. Lighting and letter-discovery hang off that rhythm.

  • Custom 2D lighting shader in Godot
  • 23 hand-written letters, branchless
  • Playable controller-first, keyboard-optional

  TIMELINE

SIX MONTHS, EVERY WEEK ACCOUNTED FOR
$month 01 — prototype ✓ doneFire mechanic in a gray box. One letter. Thirty minutes from first commit to first playable.
$month 02 — voice ✓ doneSoundscape, wind layer, and the fire’s breathing. Everything else hung off this.
$months 03–04 — light & letters ✓ doneShader work. Twenty-three letters drafted, cut to seventeen. Localization pass in Portuguese.
$month 05 — polish ✓ doneSteam Deck verification, controller tuning, the small sound the match makes when you strike it.
$month 06 — ship ✓ doneStore page, trailer, launch. Steam + itch.io on the same morning.

  RESULTS

NUMBERS, FOR WHAT THEY'RE WORTH
97%Positive reviews on Steam
12kWishlists at launch
34 minMedian playtime
6 langsCommunity-translated, post-launch
“We needed a team that would treat a short game seriously. IMPS did. They shipped the version we’d argued about, not the one we’d settled for.”
— A. Rocha · Writer & Director, Ember
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