Shiverbug Studios | Game Co-Development & Work-for-Hire

Shiverbug Studios' three co-founders on stage at Tranzfuser 2025, holding an oversized Public Vote Winner certificate between them, beneath a large lit Tranzfuser sign. — Public Vote Winner

Recognition

The Public Vote Went Our Way

We took Out of Water to ProtoPlay 2025 as a Tranzfuser team, and came home with the Public Vote Winner award: the highest number of votes of any team in the competition. That's our three founders on the stage, turtle included.

Part of

What we do

Four Things, Done Properly

We'd rather be brilliant at a few things than average at everything. Every service comes with the actual humans who'll do the work. Click anyone to see their portfolio and say hello.

Everything in the galleries below is our team's own work: Out of Water and personal portfolio pieces, credited to whoever made it. Client work stays confidential.

Concept Art

Characters, creatures, props and places with real charm, designed to express gameplay and world-building, not just look pretty in a folio. Led by an award-winning character concept artist with a decade of professional art experience. The gallery below follows one design from first character sketch to finished relic set.

Exploration, thumbnails and rapid iteration
Character, creature, costume and prop design
Production-ready sheets and turnarounds your team can build from
Fantasy, historical and sci-fi specialisms, stylized or grounded

The people behind it

Sarah ChildsCharacter Concept Artist

Concept board for the Elder Turtle: an ethereal blue spirit turtle holding a glowing trident, beside two views of the statue it becomes, with notes on its role as the player's guide and an invented ancient script

Stylised 3D Art

Environments, props and characters with personality: strong shape language, exaggerated forms and silhouettes that read at a glance. Vibrant in engine, not just in renders.

Blockouts and greybox dressing through to final polish
Modular environment kits and hero props
Stylised character and creature art
Complete scenes: terrain, foliage and set dressing
Game-ready assets with sensible budgets, for Unity or Unreal

The people behind it

Garrett Windus3D Artist

Martin Wilkinson3D Artist

Josh Cairns3D Artist

Max BreezeCharacter Artist

Evan Atherton-ElphickCharacter Artist

Coral Quarters: a stylised wooden beach shack on stilts with a purple shingle roof and a painted dolphin sign, palm trees and rocks behind it

Josh Cairns

The Coral Quarters prop set laid out on a beach: a wooden frame, solar panel, life ring, rope, noticeboards, crates, a kayak with paddles and the painted dolphin sign

Josh Cairns

A witch's hut built like a giant cauldron, topped with a slumping witch's hat roof and wrapped in pale tree roots. It stands on a wooden jetty lined with lit lanterns, its round door and window glowing warm against dark blue forest mist

Martin Wilkinson

Front and back views of a stylised wasteland hunter: short brown hair, a dark waistcoat and trousers with buckled leather straps, a bone claw in one hand and a horned basilisk skull on her shoulder

Evan Atherton-Elphick

Grimgrin the Ha-Bringer, a grinning cel-shaded jester automaton in a blue and gold harlequin hat, lit by a glowing crystal ball inside a shuttered fortune teller's booth at night

Evan Atherton-Elphick

Hard Surface Art

Vehicles, weapons and mechanical props built to a grounded target. Accurate panel work, clean topology and materials that hold up when the camera gets close.

Vehicles, from blockout to showroom-ready
Weapons and mechanical hero props
High-to-low bakes with clean, predictable topology
PBR materials and 4K texture sets
Game-ready assets with sensible budgets, for Unity or Unreal

The people behind it

Connor Milburn3D Artist

Nathan Hopwood3D Artist

Martin Wilkinson3D Artist

Garrett Windus3D Artist

A friendly orange robot character shown from three angles, with a cartoon face on a boxy television head and slim jointed legs

Design & Development

Level design, game design and gameplay programming for teams that need hands-on help shaping how a game actually plays. From AI and multiplayer to graphics and audio, we prototype fast, iterate honestly, and obsess over feel.

Level design in Unreal and Unity, blockout to scripted polish
Gameplay programming in Unity (C#) and Unreal Engine
AI, simulation and performance optimisation
Multiplayer and online play
Systems and mechanics design, documented properly
Narrative design, worldbuilding and player-experience passes

The people behind it

Oliver NealGameplay Programmer · Unity

Lewis MennimCEO · Unity & Unreal

Ryan HughesCFO · Unreal

Charlie AshallLevel Designer

Charlie PellingNarrative Designer

Oliver Neal

In-game shot of Gridlock, a minimalist RTS where coloured houses send streams of units across the map

Oliver Neal

None of that quite what you need? Reach out anyway. Between the core team and our talent pool of guest contributors, there's a good chance we know someone who can help.

Engines & tools we live in

Unity Unreal Engine 5 C# Blender ZBrush Substance 3D Photoshop

Out of Water screenshot: a turtle and a seagull exploring a sunny beach cove of crates and palm trees — Built in-house

Proof, not promises

The Same Team Building Out of Water

Everything on this page is the team currently building our own game, a 2-player split-screen collectathon platformer, from first concept sketch to shipped build. Environments, characters, levels and code: the style and the pipeline you see is what your project gets.

That also means we know what it's like on your side of the table: deadlines, scope calls, and the difference between "done" and "feels right".

See Out of Water

How it works

Slotting In, Without the Faff

No account managers, no six-week onboarding. You talk to the people doing the work, from the first email onwards.

STEP 01 Say hello

Email us a rough idea of what you need. A paragraph is plenty, and we're happy to sign an NDA before you share anything sensitive.

STEP 02 Scope it together

A call to pin down deliverables, timeline and budget. You'll get a clear written quote: fixed-price milestones or a day rate, whichever fits.

STEP 03 Start small

We recommend starting with a paid trial task, like one prop, one concept or one level blockout, so you can judge the fit before committing to more.

STEP 04 Slot in & ship

We work in your tools and your pipeline, with regular check-ins and one point of contact. You see progress every week, not just at milestones.

Ways to work with us

Pick a Size

Three shapes that cover most of what studios ask us for. None of them are fixed: if you need something between two of these, say so and we'll build it around your production.

Small

Extra Capacity

A short burst around a crunch point or a vertical slice.

One or two of our team, for a few weeks
A defined batch of assets or a single feature
Straight into your tools and your pipeline
Ideal as a paid trial before anything bigger

Good when you know exactly what's missing and need it done.

Enquire about Small

Medium Our recommendation

Standalone Package

A self-contained slice of art or design, start to finish.

A prop kit, a character set, a level, a concept package
Scoped and quoted up front, delivered against milestones
A small crew picked for the discipline you need
Reviews at each milestone, not just at the end

Good when you want a whole chunk of the game taken off your plate.

Enquire about Medium

Large

Full Co-Development

We embed alongside your team for the long haul.

A dedicated crew across art, design and code
Rolling monthly engagement rather than fixed deliverables
In your stand-ups, your board and your build
One point of contact who stays with you throughout

Good when you need capacity across a whole production, not one gap.

Enquire about Large

Pricing is per project, after scoping: fixed-price milestones or a day rate, whichever suits how your production runs. Tell us what you're building and we'll come back with a shape and a number.

Questions, answered

The Stuff You'd Ask Anyway

What kinds of engagement do you take on?

Three flavours: full co-development (we embed alongside your team for the long haul), standalone art or design packages (a prop kit, a set of character concepts, a level), and short bursts of extra capacity around a crunch point or vertical slice. If you're not sure which you need, that's exactly what the first call is for.

How do you price work?

Per project, after scoping. Either fixed-price milestones or a day rate, whichever suits how your production runs. We'd rather quote accurately on a real brief than publish a rate card that fits nobody.

Which engines and tools do you work in?

Unity and Unreal Engine 5 on the engine side, with gameplay programmers covering both. Art runs through Blender, ZBrush, the Substance 3D suite and Photoshop. If your pipeline has house quirks, we adapt to yours, not the other way round.

Where are you based, and how do you communicate?

North East England, on UK time, working remote-first. You get one point of contact, regular check-ins in your tools (Slack, Discord, whatever you run), and honest progress updates, including the unglamorous ones.

Will you sign an NDA?

Happily, and before you share anything you'd rather keep quiet. Confidential projects stay confidential. You'll notice the galleries on this page show our own game plus personal portfolio work by the team, never client work.

Three Shiverbug Studios team members on Brighton seafront in studio t-shirts — Develop:Brighton 2026

The studio

Games Are Better Together

Shiverbug started with a simple idea: games should be joyful, shared, and welcoming for players of all ages. The kind of thing a whole household can pile onto the sofa for.

We're designers, artists and programmers based in North East England. You'll find us at Gamebridge, GameNext, and anywhere else the region's dev scene gets together. Occasionally we even venture down south.