Presentation
Before making a video game, Ember Lab already knew how to tell stories with images.
Founded in 2009 in California by brothers Mike and Josh Grier, the studio first worked in animation and digital content creation. It thus developed know-how around characters, light, motion, and staging before having to face a very different difficulty: what happens to this mastery when the viewer picks up the controller?
That is the heart of the transition that led to Kena: Bridge of Spirits.
In a film, the director controls the frame, the rhythm, and the moment when the audience looks at a detail. In a game, the player can stop, go elsewhere, or ignore the carefully composed image. An animation must no longer only be beautiful: it must make an attack readable. A character must not only be expressive: he must respond correctly to commands. A setting cannot simply suggest that a world continues off-screen: what is actually behind must really be built.
Ember Lab drew attention before Kena with projects like the short film Dust in 2014 then Majora's Mask – Terrible Fate in 2016, a fan film inspired by The Legend of Zelda. These works already showed its ability to build coherent visual universes with a relatively compact team.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits, released in 2021, transformed this culture into an action-adventure game. The project kept the importance given to animation and characters while adding combat, exploration, progression, and systems. The Rot particularly sum up this evolution: they were designed to be immediately endearing, but also became companions used in the game's mechanics.
The success of the title confirmed that Ember Lab could keep its visual language without remaining an animation studio that simply produced an interactive film. The team remains independent, retains ownership of its universe, and is now developing Kena: Scars of Kosmora, which should extend this first success.
Ember Lab's subject is therefore not only Kena. It is the transition from a studio that knew how to make images to a team that learns to turn those images into spaces, information, and actions.
History
2009-2016: a culture built in animation
Ember Lab was founded in 2009 by Mike and Josh Grier. Its first years took place mainly in animation, advertising, and digital content for various clients.
This period developed a production culture in which art, technique, and storytelling remained closely linked. A lighting constraint can change a scene; an animation changes the perception of a character; a technical problem can produce an unexpected visual solution.
The short film Dust, made in 2014, showed that the studio could also build its own universe beyond commercial commissions.
In 2016, Majora's Mask – Terrible Fate attracted more attention. This Zelda-inspired fan film demonstrated Ember Lab's ability to understand the atmosphere of an existing universe and then produce a coherent visual interpretation.
Video games were already part of the founders' personal culture. After Terrible Fate, the idea of creating one became more concrete.
Moving from staging to interactivity
The transition only seems natural if you look at the final result.
In a film, the camera decides. In a game, the player intervenes. Ember Lab therefore had to relearn part of its craft.
A scene must keep working when the player looks elsewhere. A character must be designed for what he will do over several hours, not only for what he must express in a few shots. An attack animation must convey a clear enough timing to allow a dodge or a parry.
Movement becomes information.
This transformation is probably the most important learning of the period: the old know-how is not abandoned, but it is given a new function.
Kena: creating a world that belongs to the studio
The project that became Kena: Bridge of Spirits allowed Ember Lab to take another step. For the first time, the studio built an original property designed for video games.
Kena is a young Spirit Guide accompanied by small creatures called the Rot. Visually, the universe immediately matches Ember Lab's historical skills. The challenge is to make sure these elements also exist in the way the game works.
The Rot are a good example. They could have remained simple mascots able to carry the project's visual personality. Ember Lab chose to integrate them into exploration, puzzles, and combat.
The character thus becomes emotional and mechanical at the same time.
The studio uses Unreal Engine 4, which saves it from building its entire technological infrastructure from scratch. This base does not however solve the specific problems of video games: interactive camera, level design, combat, progression, interfaces, save, or performance.
Ember Lab therefore learned a new craft around skills it already possessed.
2021: the transition becomes real
After a very visible reveal during a PlayStation event in 2020, Kena: Bridge of Spirits was released on September 21, 2021 on PlayStation and PC.
The date represents more than a launch. Ember Lab is no longer just an animation studio developing its first game: it has delivered a complete adventure.
The result clearly keeps its roots. Characters are expressive, environments carefully composed, and light plays an important role in the atmosphere. But the game must also work through exploration, puzzles, and fights that ask the player to read enemy movements.
This coexistence is essential. Ember Lab does not try to hide its cinematic past to become a "real" game studio. It rather learns to make this past interactive.
The title notably received the Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game awards at The Game Awards 2021, confirming the success of this first transition.
An original property changes the studio's future
Kena also brought something Ember Lab did not have during its period of commercial commissions or fan films: a universe that belongs to it.
The character, the Rot, and the Spirit Guides can now be extended, adapted, or transformed by the studio itself.
The game continues to circulate on new platforms over the years, but the most important piece of information is not the detailed history of these versions. It lies in the fact that Kena does not remain a one-off project without a future.
Ember Lab keeps its independence and is preparing a new production in the same universe.
Kena: Scars of Kosmora: the second test
The project currently highlighted by Ember Lab is Kena: Scars of Kosmora.
The studio's situation is now very different. Bridge of Spirits had to simultaneously create a universe and prove that Ember Lab knew how to make a game. The new production starts from a team that already knows its pipeline and has the experience of a full launch.
The game takes Kena to the island of Kosmora and introduces another tradition of Spirit Guiding. The destruction of her staff also forces the character to give up part of her certainties and discover new abilities.
These elements show that the studio is not just trying to reproduce the first game with a different setting.
The stakes become broader: evolving a property born from the transition to video games without locking Ember Lab into repeating its first success.
What Sets It Apart
The image must now enable action
Ember Lab's origin remains its most visible feature.
The studio masters animation, composition, lighting, and staging before mastering the design of a complete game. This gives it an aesthetic advantage, but also a constraint: in an interactive medium, the image must keep working when the player has part of the control.
An animation therefore cannot be judged only on its beauty. It must convey a timing. A movement must remain readable. A character must look expressive without sacrificing response to commands.
The simplest phrase to sum up this transformation might be:
the image must no longer only produce an emotion; it must also enable a decision.
Keeping the cinematic roots without making an interactive film
Ember Lab does not try to erase its past.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits directly uses the importance of characters, light, music, and visual composition. But the studio chooses a structure that also leaves room for exploration and combat.
This search for balance explains part of its identity. The team keeps a director's sensibility without being able to fully control the camera or the rhythm of the player.
The game thus becomes a conversation between several crafts rather than a succession of isolated departments: technique, animation, design, and narrative must produce the same feeling, even when they approach the problem from different directions.
Making characters exist in the mechanics
The Rot particularly illustrate how Ember Lab tries to link image and interaction.
Their design alone is enough to make them immediately recognizable, but the studio does not stop there. They accompany the player, participate in puzzles, and intervene in the functioning of the world.
This integration allows the relationship to build during action, not only during cinematics.
The principle goes beyond the Rot: a memorable character or creature must have a reason to exist when the player picks up the controller again.
A small team that chooses a manageable ambition
Ember Lab remains an independent and relatively compact structure. This scale encourages the cross-pollination of crafts, but also requires carefully choosing what the studio can really produce.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits does not try to become a gigantic open world or a permanent activity. The adventure keeps a clear progression and an identifiable ending.
This mastery of scale is important for a first game. Ambition is not only measured by the size of the world or the amount of content; it is also measured by the ability to finish a coherent work with the available resources.
The new step is now to preserve this discipline while growing the universe. Scars of Kosmora will have to show not only that Kena can continue, but what kind of game studio Ember Lab wants to become after succeeding in its first transition.
Good to Know
- Ember Lab was founded in 2009 in California by brothers Mike and Josh Grier.
- The studio started in animation and digital content before turning to video games.
- Dust, made in 2014, is one of its notable original narrative projects of the animation period.
- Ember Lab produced in 2016 Majora's Mask – Terrible Fate, a fan film inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.
- Kena: Bridge of Spirits is the studio's first video game.
- The game was released on September 21, 2021 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC.
- Kena: Bridge of Spirits was developed with Unreal Engine 4.
- The game notably won Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game at The Game Awards 2021.
- Ember Lab remains independent and retains ownership of the Kena universe.
- The project currently highlighted by the studio is Kena: Scars of Kosmora, a new adventure set in the same universe.