Light No Fire’s Ambitions Go Beyond Its Massive World, With Advanced Multiplayer and World-Building Technology Pushing the Limits

Hello Games’ upcoming survival adventure, Light No Fire, is starting to sound much more ambitious than you might have expected, especially as new details reveal how the project is influencing the development of No Man’s Sky. The updates hint at bigger plans for the upcoming adventure.

Sean Murray, the studio’s founder, has shared more information about the technology being developed for the upcoming game, confirming that several major features introduced through recent No Man’s Sky updates originally came from work on Light No Fire. These shared advancements could play a major role in shaping the scale and possibilities of the new fantasy adventure.

These developments include new gameplay systems, technology capable of supporting enormous multiplayer communities, advanced world simulation, massive structures, and improvements to lighting and performance. Although Hello Games hasn’t revealed everything it has planned for the fantasy adventure, Murray has indicated that the project’s ambitions go beyond what many players currently realize.

There’s also growing speculation that Light No Fire might finally make another appearance at the Game Awards this December, three years after its original reveal at the same event.

The developers have apparently been ready to share more information about the game for quite some time, although no new appearance has been confirmed. Until Hello Games officially reveals more, the technology appearing in No Man’s Sky provides an intriguing look at what the studio has been working on behind the scenes. 

Both games run on the same underlying engine, allowing Hello Games to transfer technology between them when it makes sense. Murray explained that the team sometimes develops a feature specifically for Light No Fire, only to realize that the same technology could improve No Man’s Sky as well.

This approach has already resulted in several substantial additions to the space exploration game, meaning some of its recent improvements also offer a glimpse into the tools being developed for the upcoming fantasy adventure. You might be experiencing the results of Light No Fire’s development without seeing the game itself, as those technical advancements are already making their way into another major Hello Games project.

One of the clearest examples comes from the Voyagers update for No Man’s Sky, which introduced a new approach to spacecraft construction and exploration. The update allows you to build and customize large, fully explorable ships, complete with interiors that can be designed and modified to suit your preferences.

You can move around inside your spacecraft while traveling through space, making these ships more than just vehicles used to get from one destination to another. Murray confirmed that the technology behind this feature originated from work on Light No Fire, with the developers realizing that their new systems could also support enormous customizable spacecraft in No Man’s Sky.

That connection is particularly compelling because Light No Fire takes place in a completely different setting.

Instead of exploring space and visiting countless planets, you’ll venture across an enormous fantasy world featuring medieval-inspired environments, mountains, forests, oceans, settlements, and dragons. Technology originally developed to support large, explorable spacecraft could potentially be adapted to support different structures and gameplay systems in this new setting.

Hello Games hasn’t explained exactly how these systems will work in Light No Fire, but Murray’s comments confirm that the technology was developed for the upcoming game before being adapted for No Man’s Sky. This could allow the studio to introduce new gameplay possibilities. Another important development comes from the Cosmos update for No Man’s Sky, which was released on September 9 and introduced several new systems that could eventually benefit Light No Fire. 

The update also introduces enormous abandoned structures filled with resources, new equipment, improvements to space environments, and changes to how players organize themselves across the universe. During the presentation discussing these additions, Murray specifically mentioned Light No Fire while explaining the technology behind the update, directly connecting the two projects once again.

Murray explained that the new technology is being tested and refined through No Man’s Sky, with the hope that players will eventually experience it in Light No Fire as well. While Hello Games hasn’t confirmed which individual features will appear in the fantasy adventure, the studio is already experimenting with systems designed to support larger structures, more complex environments, and new forms of multiplayer interaction.

That work could prove particularly important for a game built around one enormous shared planet rather than a universe containing countless separate worlds. The developers now have an opportunity to adapt systems tested in No Man’s Sky to support a different kind of exploration and cooperation.

The Cosmos update’s new alliance system is another example of how ambitious these developments have become.

It allows players to organize themselves into enormous communities, with Murray describing alliances involving tens of thousands of players working together and claiming space stations. He explained that this was something the team previously never imagined it would be capable of achieving, and implementing the technology required a substantial amount of work.

Hello Games now has systems capable of supporting large player organizations, shared objectives, and structures connected to entire communities, and Murray has linked these advancements to the future of Light No Fire. These features could make cooperation a bigger part of the overall experience.

If the studio adapts some of that technology to its fantasy adventure, you could potentially see multiplayer communities operating on a much larger scale than those found in traditional survival games. Instead of organizing around space stations and interstellar groups, similar systems could support settlements, kingdoms, alliances, shared structures, or groups of explorers traveling together across the planet.

These possibilities remain speculative, as Hello Games hasn’t confirmed that any of these specific features will appear in the game. However, the underlying technology is already being developed and tested, giving the studio more options as it continues building the experience. The scale of Light No Fire’s world is another major reason these systems could matter. While No Man’s Sky spreads its exploration across an enormous universe of planets and star systems, Light No Fire is being developed around a single planet approximately the size of Earth.

The world is expected to feature continents, oceans, mountains, forests, creatures, and different environments, all within one enormous shared space. Hello Games has built a universe where you can explore and have multiplayer interactions in the same vast terrain, instead of spreading players across different planets.

The original reveal involved players traveling through dense forests, crossing huge landscapes, exploring underwater environments, and flying on dragons.

Massive mountains loomed over the surrounding terrain, highlighting the scope of the world Hello Games wants you to explore. The planet will use procedural generation to create an environment comparable in scale to Earth, with landscapes stretching across a vast area. Lighting and performance improvements are also playing an important role in the development process. When discussing the technical improvements across Hello Games’ projects, Murray highlighted the new volumetric lighting tech introduced with the Cosmos update.

Because Light No Fire and No Man’s Sky run on the same engine, improvements to the lighting, rendering, and environmental technology could benefit both games. In the original trailer for Light No Fire, we already saw atmospheric forests, dramatic landscapes, dense vegetation, detailed natural environments, and more realistic lighting could help these locations look and feel more convincing, especially in caves, mountains, and places affected by sunlight, fog, and weather.

The technical benefits extend beyond visual improvements.

In a recent interview with Polygon, Murray explained that development on Light No Fire has produced performance optimizations that have also benefited No Man’s Sky. Because both projects use the same engine, the team has been able to transfer improvements involving memory management, rendering efficiency, and overall performance between the games.

For now, Hello Games hasn’t announced exactly when it will share more substantial details about Light No Fire or how many of these systems will make it into the final game. A potential appearance at The Game Awards remains speculation rather than a confirmed announcement.

Still, the improvements already appearing in No Man’s Sky demonstrate that development on Light No Fire is producing technology that extends beyond its own world. As Hello Games continues refining its engine, multiplayer systems, lighting, and performance, you can expect the relationship between the two games to remain an important part of the studio’s ongoing development work.