Hoxton · London · Est. 2014
We build weird, wonderful games that ship.
FrostPortalBase is an independent studio in Hoxton making original titles and co-development for teams who want their game finished, polished and live — not stuck in pre-production forever.
What we do
Full-cycle development, no filler
Pick a lane or hand us the whole thing. Every engagement runs on two-week sprints with a playable build at the end of each one.
We take a pitch deck or a vertical slice and drive it all the way to a shipped title on PC and console. Includes design direction, engineering, art, audio direction and a certification pass. Milestone billing, fixed scope per phase, and a playable build every fortnight.
Gameplay systems, tools, editor extensions and performance work. We embed with your team or run a standalone strike squad. Recent work: deterministic physics for a racing title and a 60fps port to Switch.
Netcode is our nerdy joy. Rollback for fighting and versus games, authoritative server sim for shooters, and matchmaking that survives a Reddit front-page spike. We stress-test to 10,000 concurrent before you do.
We set up the boring plumbing — naming conventions, LOD budgets, import automation — so your artists stop firefighting. Stylised 3D, pixel, and 2D-skeletal rigs. We can also produce the assets themselves.
Seasons, events, balance patches and telemetry dashboards. We keep your live game breathing without turning it into a slot machine. Includes a 24-hour hotfix SLA during launch windows.
The crew
Small studio, sharp people
Fourteen people above a print shop on Tabernacle Street. Everyone here has shipped something you can actually buy.
Marcus Vane
Studio Director & Creative Lead
Ex-lead designer on two BAFTA-nominated indies. Prototypes in a notebook before anyone touches an engine.
Priya Nadkarni
Technical Director
Netcode obsessive. Wrote our rollback framework. Will fight you about tick rates.
Sol Okafor
Art Director
Stylised 3D and hand-painted textures. Ran art on a title with 4m installs.
Ellie Hartmann
Lead Gameplay Engineer
Makes controls feel good. Ports things to Switch that shouldn't run on Switch.
Dev Rahman
Producer
Keeps the sprints honest and the scope from eating everyone alive.
Nora Beaumont
Audio & Live Ops
Adaptive music systems and the person who reads every telemetry graph at 2am.
By the numbers
Eleven years, a lot of builds
Voices
What partners actually say
They took a broken prototype and a panicking team and turned it into a title that hit 200k wishlists before launch. The fortnightly playable builds kept everyone sane.
Our multiplayer fell over every time we got press. FrostPortalBase rewrote the netcode and we survived a full front-page day without a single rollback disaster.
The Switch port everyone said was impossible runs at a locked 60. They're honest about scope, which after three other studios felt like a novelty.
Their art pipeline setup saved us maybe six weeks a year of manual re-importing. Unglamorous work done properly.
Ways to work
Two ways to hire the studio
Ongoing monthly retainer — best for live games and long co-dev.
Strike Squad
- 2 senior engineers embedded
- Two-week sprint cadence
- Shared repo & CI access
- Weekly build review
- 48-hour response SLA
Full Production
- Dedicated cross-discipline team
- Design, engineering, art & audio
- Milestone-based delivery
- Playable build every fortnight
- Certification & launch support
Live Ops
- Seasons, events & balance
- Telemetry dashboards
- 24-hour hotfix SLA
- Community-driven roadmap
- Monthly performance report
Say hello
Pitch us your game
Tell us where your project is stuck or where you want it to go. We reply to every serious enquiry within two working days.