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Arm produces game to show off neural technology
Developed with Sumo Digital, Neural Dawn is the world’s first mobile game to use Unreal Engine MegaLights claiming to demonstrate desktop-class visuals on mobile while maintaining battery life.
Set for release later in 2026, Neural Dawn serves as a practical demonstration of how neural graphics can be integrated into modern game development pipelines. With 120 minutes of gameplay and four levels, it follows a research scientist within a cave network who is guided by light to uncover the truth behind a collapsing civilization, the head scientist’s hidden plan, and their own connection to it. Lighting is central to both the art direction and gameplay; when players see light, it signals interactivity and guides exploration.
Arm believes AI will reshape the graphics pipeline. The future of mobile graphics will not be defined solely by faster GPUs, but by the ability to combine graphics and neural compute to deliver richer experiences within a fixed power budget.
Neural Dawn uses Neural Technologies – Neural Super Sampling and Denoising (NSSD) and Neural Frame Rate Upscaling (NFRU) – to reduce rendering costs and free more performance for richer scenes, more dynamic lighting, and smoother motion.
The game is built using Unreal Engine 5.6.1, is the first mobile game to use Unreal Engine MegaLights, showing how developers can bring complex direct lighting and ray-traced shadows to mobile devices. MegaLights enables large numbers of dynamic lights in a scene, giving artists more creative control and allowing lighting to become part of the storytelling and gameplay rather than a static background element. Artists can now see final lighting faster and make decisions earlier, reducing the need for long pre-baked cycles. It also means fewer creative compromises when building more ambitious mobile games.
This level of lighting on mobile has historically carried a high performance and power cost. Arm Neural Technology helps offset that cost by reducing the workload required to produce high-quality images and smooth motion. This enables advanced real-time, ray-traced lighting within the power constraints of a mobile platform.
Developers can access these capabilities through Arm’s Unreal Engine plug-ins, providing a “plug-and-play” integration within existing development workflows, rather than requiring custom rendering pipelines or extensive manual optimization.
Neural Dawn was developed using standard industry tools and workflows that developers can follow, giving a realistic view of how neural graphics can fit into existing game production. A small team of 17 people at Sumo Digital built the game in 18 months from pre-production to delivery, using workflows that mirror what developers will use as the Arm Neural Graphics Development Kit evolves.
Arm is taking learnings from Neural Dawn and sharing practical guidance on how to implement neural graphics into games through the new Arm Neural Technology Playbook, with the first edition available now.
In July, Arm will update the Neural Graphics Development Kit to include NFRU resources and upgrade existing NSS resources to give developers more options for balancing image quality, cost and performance. Developers can sign up for Early Access now to get the resources ahead of general availability.
Dev kit:
