Porting smarter: How to slice months off tight timelines 

In a world where ports have become a defining part of game publishers’ strategies, the teams that deliver them need to move fast without cutting corners. That requires both the right expertise and the right process. 

“The secret is strong upfront planning and disciplined execution,” says Room 8 Group Engineering Division Director Aleksei Kanash. “The right approach can reduce porting scope by 20–30% before development even scales—and continuous performance monitoring prevents regressions instead of fixing them late.” 

In the examples below, we speak to two experts from our Technology team, Tech Art Engineering Director Yoan Aleksiev, and Engineering Division Director Maksym Mytkevych. They detail how they brought that thinking to two very different projects—turning technical complexity into notable, measurable reductions in porting and optimization time.

Bringing Life Is Strange 2 to Switch and Stadia

When the opportunity came to bring Life Is Strange 2 to Nintendo Switch and Stadia, the team faced a challenge: how to preserve the heart of a narrative-driven experience across two very different technical environments—without introducing risk, rework, or late-stage disruption? 

Two months saved by mapping risks at the start  

Rather than diving straight into production, the team stepped back and asked two critical questions: Where was complexity most likely to surface? What would hurt most if it surprised them at month six instead of month one? 

That thinking led to a structured risk map at the very start of development—identifying technical unknowns, engine limitations, and platform-specific performance risks before they could become blockers. Senior engineers focused their time where it genuinely mattered, rather than firefighting avoidable issues later.

That early clarity contributed to a more predictable delivery timeline and an estimated two months reduction in late-stage optimization and rework. 

As the project’s Tech Art Engineering Director Yoan Aleksiev explains: “By front-loading the uncertainty, we could make informed decisions quickly rather than reacting to surprises. It kept the whole delivery predictable.”   

Upgrading the engine early cut optimization time by 25%  

One of the most impactful decisions came on the engine side. The original game predated native Stadia support, so remaining on the existing Unreal Engine version would have required custom workarounds—introducing long-term maintenance and optimization overhead. 

Instead, the team chose to migrate the project to a newer version of Unreal Engine. That wasn’t the simpler path—bringing everything across added complexity early in development—but it paid off quickly. With official platform integrations and tooling in place, the team streamlined cross-platform workflows, removed key optimization blockers early, and ultimately shortened the optimization phase by approximately 25%, while avoiding the kind of ongoing maintenance burden that typically builds up over time. 

Turning buffer time into polish, not panic 

Throughout production, disciplined execution reinforced these early gains. Clear task ownership, early prioritization of high-risk systems, and steady milestone delivery created genuine buffer time within a total project duration of around a year. 

Our team reinvested that buffer into performance tuning, stability improvements, and targeted bug fixing—rather than burning it on emergency optimization or late-stage recovery.

The result was a port that honored the original experience across both platforms, delivered with controlled momentum built on early, deliberate technical decisions. 

The approach paid off across the board.  The port delivered on both platforms without compromising the original experience —the result of getting the hard decisions right from day one. 

Delivering a cross-platform 2000s classic with major efficiency

On another high-profile project, our teams faced a different challenge: bringing a pair of legacy titles, originally built on an early-2000s custom engine, to modern platforms as a single, unified release. One codebase needed to scale across PC, previous and current-gen consoles, and systems with significant performance limitations—each with their own rendering constraints and performance ceilings.

One rendering layer, months of integration time saved 

To handle that breadth without fragmenting development effort, the team introduced REI (Rendering Engine Infrastructure)—a unified graphics API built specifically for custom-engine porting. REI sits between a game’s existing renderer and the underlying platform graphics APIs, allowing teams to port to a single rendering layer rather than implement and maintain multiple platform-specific backends.

As our Game Engine Technical Director, Maksym Mytkevych, explains: “Instead of integrating PlayStation, Xbox DirectX 12, Switch Vulkan, and other APIs separately, we integrated REI once—relying on its platform-specific backends to handle the translation to each rendering API.”

Alongside REI, the team also used an enhanced internal version of SDL2 as a platform abstraction layer—handling input, platform APIs, and system-level differences across devices. By porting to these unified layers, rather than integrating each platform independently, the team significantly reduced integration effort—saving months of development time in the process. 

“That abstraction layer meant we didn’t have to re-solve the same platform-level problems for each device,” Maksym adds. “We could handle those differences once and reuse that work across platforms.” 

Five-platform porting delivered in 11 months 

On a project targeting this many platforms, that architectural decision reshaped the scope of the port. “A conventional approach would mean building and maintaining a separate rendering backend for every platform,” Maksym says. “Each one adds integration time, optimization work, and long-term maintenance overhead.” 

By consolidating that work through REI, the team significantly accelerated graphics integration workflows and supported five very different platforms within an 11-month production timeline, while reducing rendering complexity and long-term maintenance effort.

As Maksym explains: “By porting to REI early, we handled platform differences through backend configuration and targeted optimization rather than duplicated systems. That meant we could bring core rendering support across the full platform online significantly earlier than we’d typically expect for a legacy remaster at scale across multiple platforms.” 

2× faster rendering work—and the gains kept compounding 

Internally, the team estimates REI cut the rendering portion of porting and optimization work by approximately 2× on this project, with efficiency gains compounding as they brought additional platforms into scope. 

“REI cut a significant amount of duplicated engineering effort,” explains Maksym. “Instead of handling each platform separately, we could rely on a shared rendering layer and build on top of that as we scaled to additional platforms. That let us shift optimization away from reactive, platform-by-platform firefighting and gave us a more controlled and scalable process that worked better and more efficiently for everyone.” 

One decision that made everything easier 

Taken together, this project tells a clear story. One early architectural decision—consolidating rendering through a unified layer—removed the need for multiple platform-specific backends, brought core rendering online ahead of schedule, and produced gains that compounded with every additional platform. 

“It’s a strong case for treating rendering architecture as a strategic decision,” says Maksym. “Get it right early, and the complexity that usually compounds across a multi-platform delivery starts working in your favor instead.” 

QA from day one makes optimization gains stick 

Across each of these projects, optimization succeeded because it didn’t happen in isolation. It operated inside a controlled, measurable feedback loop—with dedicated QA expertise working alongside engineering from day one. 

Our QA teams don’t simply verify builds at the end of development. They actively monitor performance stability across platforms, track frame-rate consistency against defined budgets, and flag regressions the moment new code impacts memory, rendering, or input responsiveness. Working in step with engineering, they validate changes as they land, ensuring performance improvements hold up across different hardware targets and under real gameplay conditions. 

In some cases, our teams also implement automated performance testing pipelines—running scheduled builds, simulating gameplay scenarios, and generating detailed performance reports—to scale this validation even further where project needs demand it. 

As Aleksei puts it, stable performance matters as much as peak performance. “If frame rate drops or input response fluctuates—even briefly—players feel it immediately.” By combining automated performance testing with structured play validation, our QA specialists make sure improvements are real, repeatable, and consistent across platforms. 

That tight integration between engineering and QA is what allows optimization gains to actually stick.

 It’s key to how our teams reduce rework, protect schedules, and move complex multi-platform projects toward delivery—confidently and consistently.

Your trusted external porting partner with extensive optimization expertise 

These are just two of our many partnerships with some of the industry’s biggest studios—harnessing decades of combined expertise alongside unique, proprietary technology like REI, to deliver polished ports, plus optimized remakes and remasters across every major format. 

Whatever your project, our teams’ expertise and adaptability can help. Let’s talk.