Game development studio · Shoreditch, London
We build worlds worth getting lost in.
ShadowLegendJournal is a compact team of designers and engineers crafting narrative RPGs, custom gameplay systems, and clean console ports from our workshop on Hoxton Square. We ship playable vertical slices, not slide decks.
By the numbers
A decade of shipping playable things
Every figure below comes from titles we designed, engineered, or ported alongside independent studios and publishers.
What we do
Services built around a real production pipeline
From the first greybox to a certified console build, pick the stage you need help with — or hand us the whole thing.
A playable vertical slice with a branching quest, dialogue system, and one signature combat encounter. You walk away owning the Unreal or Unity project, design docs, and a build you can put in front of a publisher.
Typical timeline: 8–12 week engagement
Embedded engineers who build the tricky bits: inventory, save systems, AI behaviour trees, netcode, and tools your designers actually enjoy using. We work in your repo, your engine, your coding standards.
Typical timeline: Rolling, min. 4 weeks
We take your finished PC build to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S — memory budgets, TRC/lotcheck compliance, controller and platform features, all the way to a submission-ready master.
Typical timeline: 10–16 weeks
Seasonal content, balance patches, event scripting, and telemetry dashboards for games already in players’ hands. We keep your roadmap moving without pulling your core team off the next title.
Typical timeline: Monthly retainer
A cohesive visual pass — shaders, lighting, VFX, and a reactive Wwise or FMOD soundscape — that makes a prototype feel like a finished game. Delivered with a style bible your team can extend.
Typical timeline: 6–10 weeks
Moderated playtests with recruited players in our Shoreditch space, plus structured bug sweeps and a prioritised report. You get session recordings, heatmaps, and a punch list ranked by impact.
Typical timeline: Per 2-week sprint
Before & after
From greybox to gold master
Drag the handle on each shot to compare the early prototype with the version that shipped.
ShippedPrototypeAshfall Keep
Drag to compareA blockout dungeon became a hand-lit stronghold with dynamic weather.
ShippedPrototypeLumen Drift
Drag to compareRough concept frames grew into fully rendered story cutscenes.
ShippedPrototypeHollow Tide
Drag to compareA flat prototype level, ported and remastered for PlayStation 5.
ShippedPrototypeNeon Bazaar
Drag to compareA whiteboard market sketch turned into a bustling, shoppable hub.
Studio reviews
Teams we have shipped alongside
A few words from the studios, publishers, and solo developers we have partnered with over the years.
They turned our messy design pitch into a vertical slice in nine weeks. Our publisher greenlit the full game off the back of that single build.
The Switch port was flawless. Passed lotcheck first submission and held 60fps in the busiest scenes I never thought would run on handheld.
Their engineers dropped into our repo and shipped a save system in a fortnight. Clean code, good comments, and they actually documented the tools.
The playtest lab paid for itself twice over. We killed two features nobody liked and doubled down on the one that had players grinning.
Reliable, communicative, and refreshingly honest about scope. When something was risky, they told us early instead of at the deadline.
The technical audio pass changed the whole feel of the game. Footsteps, weather, and combat suddenly had weight. Genuinely magic work.
Questions & answers
Things developers ask us
Search below, or drop us a line and we will answer anything specific to your project.
Our two main pipelines are Unreal Engine 5 and Unity, and we are equally comfortable in both. For smaller tools and prototypes we also work in Godot. If your project lives in a custom or in-house engine, we are happy to embed and learn your codebase.
Yes, entirely. Every engagement transfers full IP and source ownership to you on final payment. We deliver the complete project repository, asset sources, and documentation so your team can keep building without us.
That is one of our core services. We handle memory budgeting, platform certification (TRC and lotcheck), controller and store integration, and deliver a submission-ready master. We are registered developers on all three current-generation platforms.
Fixed-scope work like prototypes and ports is quoted as a flat fee after a short discovery call. Ongoing engineering and live ops run on a day rate or monthly retainer. You will always get a written estimate with milestones before anything starts.
Absolutely — roughly half our clients are one to three people. We can slot in as your engineering team, your porting partner, or an extra pair of hands during a crunch. Scope scales down comfortably.
Please do. Our space on Hoxton Square doubles as our playtest lab, and we love showing developers around. Book a slot through the contact form and we will put the kettle on.
We offer live ops retainers for patches, seasonal content, and telemetry, but there is no obligation. If you would rather take it in-house, we hand over runbooks and give your team a proper walkthrough of everything we built.
Get in touch
Tell us about your game
Send over a few details and we will get back to you within one working day. Prototypes, ports, or a tricky engineering problem — we are keen to hear it.
Studio details
Drop by, call, or email — we answer everything ourselves.
- Phone+44 20 7254 9876
- Email[email protected]
- Studio58A Hoxton Square, Shoreditch, London N1 6PB
- Studio hoursMon–Fri, 9:30am–6:00pm GMT