No Man's Sky is coming to mobile somehow, and Hello Games says it's thanks in part to Light No Fire.

Developer Hello Games has somehow managed to fit its world-sized space sim No Man's Sky onto iPhone and iPad devices, thanks in part to the studio's upcoming Light No Fire. Read more

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Developer Hello Games has somehow managed to fit its world-sized space sim No Man's Sky onto iPhone and iPad devices, thanks in part to the studio's upcoming Light No Fire.

A decade after its highly divisive launch and years of subsequent returns, No Man's Sky is coming to iOS on October 28 with all its many updates. Hello Games promises that the game will run on devices up to the iPhone 11, and pre-orders begin today.

"For close to three years, we've had this little side project. There's something incredible about this world that fits in your pocket," studio co-founder Sean Murray said in a deep dive video (below). "We want console-quality visuals and gameplay that you can play anywhere. We support touch, we support controllers, even mouse and keyboard. That's what I loved working on."

Murray also explained that Hello Games has made "a bunch of tweaks and improvements" that should benefit players on all platforms, including PC, PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox. But once upon a time, the team thought a mobile port would "never be possible."

Of course, iPhones have become increasingly powerful in the decade since No Man's Sky landed, though there's another reason why this port can still exist and run today: Light. No Fire.

"We have to think very hard about where we're going to get that performance from, and how we can better fit into our memory profile," Murray said while speaking with Polygon. "And some of those changes came from Light No Fire. The things we were doing there, where we had to make things better, 'Oh, we can bring that to all of this.' It's all a shared engine."

Light No Fire has been out of the spotlight since its unveiling in 2023. In case you need reminding, this is a procedurally generated co-op adventure game set on a fantasy planet. While No Man's Sky aims for the stars, the studio's sequel takes things back a bit to focus this time on the image of an open world planet (instead of millions) "without borders".

Last month, Murray suggested that Light No Fire was a long way off, but he told Eurogamer (that's us!) that he learned the "very important lesson of not talking about things" early on. Well, then keep your secrets.