Astel Games
Home Services Work FAQ About Careers Contact
Start a project Play the 3D demo
About

An art and co-development studio built for global pipelines.

Astel Games — formerly Northern Light Games — is a game production studio based in Shenyang, China, working with publishers and developers across China, North America, Europe and Japan.

Formerly Northern Light GamesShenyang, ChinaGMT+8
The short version

Ten years of other people's deadlines.

We started as a small art team taking on character and environment work for Chinese studios. That work taught us the two things that actually decide whether an outsourcing partnership survives: whether the art direction holds at scale, and whether the pipeline stays clean when twenty people touch the same project.

Today the studio covers the full production chain — concept, 3D art, animation, cinematics, VFX, level art and full-cycle development — and we work the way our clients' internal teams work: their engine, their tools, their review cadence. The name changed in 2026. The way we work did not.

10+
Years in game production
150+
Artists, engineers and producers
200+
Titles contributed to
30+
Studios served worldwide
How we operate

Three rules we do not bend.

Say the hard thing early

If a scope is unrealistic or an art direction will not hold at scale, you hear it in week one — not at the milestone review.

Match the reference, not our taste

Our job is your game's look, not our portfolio's look. Art direction is measured against your references.

Own the whole asset

A model is not delivered until it imports cleanly, reads correctly in-engine and survives a light pass.

Capability snapshot

What we run in-house.

Disciplines
3D art, animation, cinematics, concept, VFX, level art, full-cycle development, virtual humans & motion capture
Engines
Unreal Engine 4 & 5, Unity, proprietary engines
Platforms shipped for
PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android
Core tools
Maya, ZBrush, Blender, Substance 3D Painter/Designer, Houdini, Marvelous Designer, Marmoset, Nuke, After Effects
Working languages
English (production), Chinese (internal art review)
Time zone
GMT+8, with production hours shifted to overlap EU and US Pacific
Where we work

One studio, one production floor.

Shenyang, China

Headquarters & main production floor

Room 10, 50th Floor, Pan Pacific Building, No.18 Pangjiang Street, Dadong District, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, P.R. China

Working hours

Overlap built into the schedule.

Mon–Fri, 09:30–19:00 (GMT+8) · overlap with EU mornings and US Pacific evenings

Studios we have delivered for
Tencent NetEase Riot Games Ubisoft Blizzard Xishanju Shengqu Games Changyou Youzu IGG Seasun 37 Interactive

Come and see how we work.

Book a call with the art lead and the producer who would actually run your project — not a sales team.