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FakeFish
October 20, 2026 at 08:04 PM
Created article on FakeFish (2026-10-20)
FakeFish is an independent game studio from Turku, Finland, and the developer of Frostrail. Frostrail is the studio's second game, following the submarine simulator Barotrauma. It is published by Shiro Unlimited, the third-party publishing arm of Shiro Games.
FakeFish started in 2014 as a team of five university friends. By its own account, the studio only really made its mark in 2019, when Barotrauma launched in Steam early access.
The idea for Frostrail took shape in the same year. Lead designer Ez came up with it while traveling to his summer cottage along a foggy, deserted highway through the forest. He daydreamed: "Wouldn't it be cool if there was some sort of truck simulator meets Silent Hill or something?" Over the following years the idea changed from a truck game into a train game, until the studio could develop it with a team. The full story is on Development History.
In April 2025 the studio described itself as almost 30 people strong, a small company but big enough to handle two separate game projects. Its staff come from 8 different countries, though most are Finnish. Some have spent their whole careers at FakeFish, while others came from several other game companies.
The Frostrail team includes many developers who worked on Barotrauma, as well as people hired specifically for Frostrail. Some developers on Frostrail had not worked on Barotrauma, and some Barotrauma developers do not work on Frostrail. The April 2025 introduction post divided the Frostrail team into these groups:
Design, including lead designer Ez.
Art.
Programming.
Audio and music.
Production and community management.
FakeFish develops the game, while the publisher handles marketing through its own partners and the localization of the game. The two companies had worked on Frostrail together for a couple of years before its April 2025 announcement. The store page credits both: the legal notice reads ©2025 Shiro Unlimited and ©2025 FakeFish.
The studio has pointed out one clear difference from its earlier game. Frostrail uses Unreal Engine 5, and partly because of engine constraints, the full moddability of Barotrauma is not possible; the team said it would instead explore other customization and smaller-scale modding. For the Early Access release, the store page cites the collective Early Access experience of Shiro Games and FakeFish as the reason for the approach.
Almost everyone at FakeFish can be found on the official Discord server for Frostrail, under their Discord nicknames, along with members of the publishing team at Shiro. The studio posts development updates on the game's Steam news page, including seasonal development updates, wishlist milestones and test announcements. See Playtests and Closed Beta.