What is Emberline?
Emberline is a single-shard, planet-scale MMO in pre-production from Smoothgrain. It's set on a real-scale world where the terminator — the seam between day and night — sweeps forever across the surface as a line of ember-colored light.
You play a Mote: a featureless humanoid of frosted dark glass, lit from within by two colors that carry your Lineage and your Vocation. You cross a shared planet. You help found a settlement. You stand against what the night brings. The game runs at a locked 60+ FPS on everything from a laptop to an Apple TV 4K.
#What platforms will it support?
macOS, Windows, Apple TV 4K, and Linux at launch. Apple TV 4K is a first-class target — controller-first input, living-room 4K UI, full feature parity with the desktop experience. The TV experience is designed as a full session, not a compromised port.
#Is there a beta?
Not yet. Emberline is in pre-production — vision locked, early prototyping underway, the first playable vertical slice still ahead. When a closed alpha opens, it'll be announced through the newsletter first.
#How do I get in?
Subscribe to the newsletter at the bottom of the home page. When the game is ready for players, that list is the first place you'll hear about it. Nothing else is sent to it — no regular digest, no hype.
#What makes it different from other MMOs?
Three things. One: the world is a single, real-scale planet shared by every player, not a collection of regional instances. Two: the game's signature visual is the terminator itself — a continuous line of dawn-and-dusk light that sweeps across the planet in real time, with civilization reading as a second, brighter line across the dark hemisphere at night. Three: the target platform list includes Apple TV 4K at full parity, with the UI and input designed for a controller and a couch from the first commit.
None of those are individually unique. Together, they set the tone and the design constraints.
#Why a single shard?
Because the line of warmth across the planet is the idea of the game, and a shared clock and a shared surface are what make it real. When it is dusk where you are and dawn on the other side of the continent, other players are actually waking up there. A sharded version would simulate the effect. Emberline lives it.
#Apple TV 4K, really?
Yes. The Apple TV 4K has the GPU and thermals to render what the game demands, provided the engine is authored to its budget. Emberline is being built to that budget from the first commit. Every frame holds at 16.6 ms or better, and that target is audited at every gameplay density — a quiet solo moment, a crowded settlement with dozens of players on screen, a high-action encounter with the full effects stack running.
#Who builds this?
Smoothgrain — a small studio that makes software with intention. Its other work includes Kerf (a web editor), Sage (a project management app), and Notch (a household finance tool). Emberline is the studio's first game. More at smoothgrain.app.
#