Light No Fire is the No Man's Sky devs blurring the lines between Valheim, Death Stranding, and the open adventure of Lord of the Rings

Light No Fire screenshot featuring a lush environment and strange creatures — (Image credit: Hello Games)

Seven years after the launch of No Man's Sky, Hello Games is finally looking towards a new horizon. The developer appeared at The Game Awards 2023 to showcase Light No Fire – a brand-new co-op adventure that looks like a daring cross between Valheim and Death Stranding, routed through an expansive fantasy world akin to Pandora or Middle-earth.

Where No Man's Sky sought to procedurally generate an entire universe, allowing players the opportunity to freely travel between solar systems, as well as name planets, creatures, and locations as they discover them, Light No Fire is taking aim at something more self-contained but no less ambitious. Hello Games is procedurally-generating a single planet to scale – think of how large the Earth is, home to 7.8 billion people and hundreds upon hundreds of millions of square miles of explorable space, and that will effectively be the playground here.

A survival-crafting game at heart, you'll be able to team up with friends and other players to explore and settle the wilderness. Think of the scenes in The Lord of the Rings where The Fellowship is running across rolling, open expanses – that's the sort of vibe which Hello Games is hoping to cultivate. Your crew may decide to scale a mountain that dwarfs Mount Everest on foot, an act that won't be achievable in a single sitting. Once you reach the summit, you'll be able to see for miles in all directions, pinpoints for where your adventure may go next. Or perhaps you'll build a little homestead, something which other players can discover and use in the future.

This sense of freedom runs through the entire game, where Hello Games wants to induce a sense of gradual exploration as you run the wilds, travel deep underwater, across oceans and lakes, or into the skies on flying mounts – the fun drawn from the bonds that are formed with friends along the way. There are RPG elements in here too, with multiple species to choose from when building your character, towns full of NPCs to encounter, combat with enemy antagonists, and a story running all throughout. And while Hello Games is yet to confirm how many players will be active on a single server at any one time, the planet that is being procedurally-rendered is shared by everyone.

There's still a lot to be learned about Light No Fire – Hello Games is yet to confirm an exact release window or platforms. But right now it's looking like one of the most ambitious and creative adventures to emerge in quite some time. A truly open world the likes of which we've never seen before, focused around togetherness and underpinned by a real sense of discovery. Hello Games has spent seven years transforming No Man's Sky into one of the most impressive sci-fi games ever made, and it has earned all the anticipation that's about to come its way surrounding Light No Fire.

For more on all the happenings at the event, be sure to check out all of our Game Awards live coverage to stay up to date.

Josh West is Editor-in-Chief of GamesRadar+. He has over 18 years of experience in both online and print journalism, and was awarded a BA (Hons) in Journalism and Feature Writing. Josh has contributed to world-leading gaming, entertainment, tech, music, and comics brands, including games™, Edge, Retro Gamer, SFX, 3D Artist, Metal Hammer, and Newsarama. In addition, Josh has edited and written books for Hachette and Scholastic, and worked across the Future Games Show as an Assistant Producer. He specializes in video games and entertainment coverage, and has provided expert comment for outlets like the BBC and ITV. In his spare time, Josh likes to play FPS games and RPGs, practice the bass guitar, and reminisce about the film and TV sets he worked on as a child actor.