Since they can't play Light No Fire yet, Hello Games fans are keeping busy by drawing dragons

A dragon flying through the sky with a rider on its back toward a strange large round building

(Image credit: Hello Games)

Last month at The Game Awards we finally got our first look at Sean Murray's followup to No Man's Sky—and it's a huge one. In its next game, Light No Fire, Hello Games is trading infinite procedural planets for a single world, but that one open world is going to be the size of an actual planet.

That's a big promise, and there's plenty of healthy skepticism about Light No Fire. At the same time, there's lots of genuine excitement (it's already in the top 20 of Steam's most wishlisted games) and no small amount of speculation about how the Earth-sized survival adventure will work. Apart from that one trailer we still don't really know all that much about Light No Fire yet, except that it's fantasy themed rather than science fiction: players will fly around the open world with dragons instead of spaceships.

In that information vacuum, and without a release date or even vague idea of when they'll be able to play it, fans have been keeping their eager hands busy by drawing their own version of Light No Fire's dragons. Lots of them.

In fact, there's currently an unofficial dragon drawing contest happening on the Light No Fire subreddit, though I don't think that's the real motivation. I think people are just excited for the game and looking for a way to express it. Here's a few dragon drawings that caught my eye:

This dragon art by Rigogen is so good it was shared by Hello Games on Instagram:

Light No Fire from r/NoMansSkyTheGame

The dragon created by The_Good_Guy_Two could easily be a stained glass window in a church. A church devoted to worshipping dragons, that is:

Blazing blue - I hope you like him guys (hes very strong) from r/LightNoFireHelloGames

In Light No Fire players can be human, but they can also be bipedal rabbits or frogs. I think you can tell which one Hanrahubilarkie wants to be based on this art:

Hey guys! Watch this! from r/LightNoFireHelloGames

This one from tyrannosaur85 is great because not only does it have a dragon but it shows the planet-sized planet of Light No Fire behind it:

Char Lee just went fishing and is now going home to have a nap in his cave. from r/LightNoFireHelloGames

I like achievable art, so this one from bobdabioengineer is legit one of my favorites:

Giving that other guys masterpiece a run for its money from r/LightNoFireHelloGames

Similarly, FoxPeaTwo got to work on some notebook paper just like I used to do while zoning out in school:

I don’t want this masterpiece to dissuade anyone else from entering the contest. from r/LightNoFireHelloGames

TherealProp is working on a game about dragon riding, too, and shared some art for the occasion, which gives off some pleasing D&D manual cover art vibes:

Sorry if this uploaded twice. Here's one of my Yellow Dragon Riders with a ballista. from r/LightNoFireHelloGames

As much as I enjoy all the dragon drawings, I'm personally more interested in a different kind of mount. Dragons are a little, I dunno, standard when it comes to fantasy worlds. I'm after something different when it comes to a mount. What caught me eye in the trailer were a few glimpses of the giant birds we'll also be able to ride:

Large birds with saddles — (Image credit: Hello Games)

So I'm happy to see someone else in the community appreciates them, too:

Just a Birb (Last thing for a while) from r/LightNoFireHelloGames

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.