Amber, a global co-development company for games, revealed Station 58, a cozy puzzle adventure developed by Amber Originals, its indie label dedicated to original games.
The original owned intellectual property title marks the latest step in Amber’s business diversification strategy in creating and developing original gaming and interactive entertainment properties, alongside its co-development work, said Mihai Pohontu, CEO of Amber, in an interview with GamesBeat.
Station 58 was born from game director Dustin Hansen’s years of backpacking through national parks with his children. The game brings together two unlikely friends who are tasked with putting a broken world back together.
Taking place in the fictional Barcadero National Park, a mysterious force has fractured its wilderness, scattering parts across the sky. Playing solo or in local couch co-op, players take control of park ranger Starla Pines and Shorty, her giant robot companion, as they explore the broken park, recover its missing pieces, and uncover the mystery behind alien cubes littering the landscape. Helping to bring the concept to life, Hansen’s family contributed to Station 58’s art, animation, production, and voice acting.
“Amber Originals is an important part of our long-term vision for the company. After years of helping some of the industry’s leading publishers bring great games to players, we’re increasingly focused on supporting the creation of original IP as well,” said Pohonțu. “Station 58 reflects the type of bold creative projects we want to champion — projects led by talented teams with a unique vision and the potential to build lasting connections with players. We see Amber Originals as a natural evolution of Amber’s capabilities and an opportunity to create value through both creativity and ownership.”
Through Amber Originals, the company selectively invests in projects with a clear creative vision and commercial potential, building on more than a decade of work with top publishers and developers across titles and brands like Tetris, Pac-Man, Monument Valley, and Squid Game. It also allows the company to test new technologies and production methods that strengthen its partner work.
This is the first title for Amber Originals, a separate division dedicated to publishing original games.
“This is the first game that we have not only built ourselves. We have countless examples of games that we have built ourselves. This is the first game that we built, and we’re also publishing. And so this is very much a self-contained venture.”
The team has about 10 people and is likely to stay that way. It started about a year ago.
Pohontu thinks of Hansen as a multifaceted creative person, and he had this idea for many years and it was inspired by his family’s journeys to national parks in the U.S.
“We were very inspired by the story and game design concept. So we founded it, and it kind of speaks to the values that we’re trying to convey to this type of original content,” Pohontu said. . We believe in more family-friendly, mass-market, casual content. This is more aligned with our you know principles and values. And it’s looking really beautiful.”
Amber has had a chance to work on games for Thatgamecompany, maker of titles like Sky: Children of Light, and Ustwo’s Monument Valley 3.
“We think of games that carry emotional connection with the end user,” he said. “And that are accessible to a broad audience, with relatable characters.”
Station 58 will be available on PC via Steam. Players can wishlist the game and sign up for the Steam Playtest now, with a release date to be announced soon.
Amber has been around as an outsourcing company for a long time, and it has 950 people, including many in Eastern Europe, Latin America and with headquarters staff in California. It has added a network of specialized studios helping publishers and developers solve complex production, technology, and creative challenges across the entire game development lifecycle.
Founded as an external development studio, Amber has evolved into a trusted long-term development partner, bringing together deep multidisciplinary expertise with the flexibility to assemble the right teams for every project.
The company collaborates on some of the industry’s flagship brands and titles, such as Tetris, Pac-Man, Monument Valley, Sky, and Squid Game, while continuing to invest in emerging technologies, original IP, and talent development. Built on the belief that the future of game development belongs to adaptive companies, Amber helps partners navigate an evolving industry through innovation, collaboration, and long-term thinking.
Moving forward as a company
Moving into original work will help diversify the company further, as it’s a difficult environment for creating games. The costs are of making games keep rising, but Pohontu believes that AI tools will enable companies to lower those costs and be more nimble.
“We are a very AI forward company,” he said. “Looking able at our production processes, we are able to make them much more efficient.”
He said partners often want the company to focus on handcrafting, but Pohontu noted that his company was able to port the Morrowind game from its proprietary engine from 15 years ago to Unreal Engine 5 in just a day. Normally, that could take a team of engineers six months. That helps lower costs, and it gives the engineers new skills that makes them more valuable and they also get more time to work on other tasks, he said.
Regarding AI, he said, “We think it will transform the industry. We hope adoption will happen faster, but we’re also not blind to the reality. In the reality, there is a lot of backlash out there.”
In the past, external development companies like Behaviour Interactive have moved from making games for others to making their own games — Behaviour’s big hit title is Dead by Daylight. Sumo Digital is similar, and Pohontu said those companies have been inspirations for Amber’s strategy.