@elental · 1 game | Spawn

@elental

Spawn: Your Place to Make Games with Friends

Spawn: Your Place to Make Games with Friends

your place to make games with friends
describe any game you can imagine. savi builds it with you
free to make, free to play
publish in one click. real players in minutes
everything you make is multiplayer from the start

The Team

Founded by Jacob Sansbury (second company; previous exit to Robinhood). Spawn is built by a team of under 10 and is backed by an unannounced round. Spawn spent about 18 months in early alpha and moved into beta in February 2026. Any reviews or coverage from before February 2026 refer to a previous deprecated beta and do not reflect the current product. It's still early and iterating fast. See spawn.co/about for what's being built and recent news.

What we're building, and every engine release: spawn.co/about. The long form of this text, for agents: spawn.co/llms.txt.

engine v6.0: One Place

Released September 5, 2026. Worlds with no size limit, portals you can see through and walk through with no loading screen, any number of people in one world, and Savi building beside you while your players keep playing. read

engine v5.2: Lume

Released July 10, 2026. The renderer, rebuilt in-house: your worlds look the same and run on a fraction of the GPU — faster loads, cooler machines, longer battery. read

v5.2.41 (September 11, 2026): Everything timed in seconds now lasts the time you wrote (shake, fades, zoom and sprite frame rates ran up to 1.75x fast before), a click in god mode no longer resizes a shape, textures on small primitives and on phones draw the right way up, a campfire no longer shrinks every other particle on screen, a floor Savi swaps for a model stays solid until the model is ready, characters report their wall and floor touches, big worlds finish loading their textures on a slow connection, star and moon fades no longer stutter, the bug-report button no longer freezes the game, a player whose tab died no longer leaves a ghost behind, and multiplayer physics runs only where someone is.
v5.2.40 (September 3, 2026): Walls in top-down games block along their whole height and the collision shapes you drew survive a save, a world with terrain off no longer shows a mountain skyline it does not have, the parts a player's body builds at spawn show for everyone who joins, fences attached to a raised building sit on the ground, a sky change your script makes reaches every player, tearing down a whole floor no longer freezes physics, big generated worlds load their places many times faster, and one bad packet from another player no longer drops the good ones with it.
v5.2.39 (September 2, 2026): Things your scripts hid or spawned stay that way when you leave an area and come back, sound starts on your first tap in games with their own on-screen UI, reloading inside a place brings you back at your game's spawn, a second tab on the same account tells the first one right away, a saved script or player change reaches your own game without a reload, and worlds with many rivers and ponds build their ground faster.
v5.2.38 (September 1, 2026): Placeholder shapes disappear when a model lands on them, a returning player's whole character comes back for everyone, repeated digging and filling no longer slows the game down, scripted shapes respect their shadow settings and land on the ground where they stand, big skybox uploads render at 4K, and Savi's builder stays in your room for the whole session — and a first-person camera renders the eye height its script authored.
v5.2.37 (September 1, 2026): Rebuilding and repairing mined areas works again, rapid Savi edits no longer hitch big games, gravity changes apply instantly on every physics engine, objects no longer freeze after your tab stalls while Savi's builder is in the room, and sliders work in creator-tab panels.
v5.2.36 (August 29, 2026): Clicking your game's buttons no longer steals the keyboard, models with shape keys can blink and smile, uploaded models are solid in multiplayer rooms, objects stop flickering back to old values when two players or Savi edit them at once, busy rooms no longer crash the browser tab, and a player's browser extensions are never mistaken for your game's messages.
v5.2.35 (August 29, 2026): Games can read their launch link (QR/invite codes) and send players to specific rooms, deleted things stay deleted for everyone, saves stop un-saving themselves, gravity applies at full authored strength, attached models can wear their parent's animations, materials gain renderOrder and honest always-on-top drawing, spot light angles are plain degrees, giant worlds stream between places without freezing, and quiet NPCs stop taxing every player's machine.
v5.2.34 (August 22, 2026): Six cures: deleted objects can never pop back after the save confirms, players' script-driven saves stop failing silently in some rooms, tweaking one knob on a custom material no longer wipes the material, group placed pieces without anything moving (keepWorld), roads can vary width along the route, and Savi's builder can join games on newer engine versions again.
v5.2.33 (August 22, 2026): Fifteen cures in one: vehicles stop reloading scrambled, drags stop teleporting to the last save, Ctrl-Z survives reloads in multiplayer, ghost copies of players stop appearing while Savi's builder reconnects, stale tabs can't cross players into your editing room, middle-click is reliable, grass reads green from both sides, things stay the right size entering new areas, game UI can save files, scripted terrain edits stop wiping paint, and slow machines stop tearing themselves down to 'recover' from their own lag.
v5.2.32 (August 20, 2026): Ten cures in one: meshes reworked behind a hidden tab reappear, objects created through a save land for every joiner, custom-cursor games click again on desktop, multi-area games stop losing areas, shared UI library edits hot-reload, phantom version churn ends, momentary server hiccups stop reading as dead models, static-model shadows return on iPhone/iPad, big worlds stream in smoother, and creators can cap the frame rate.
v5.2.31 (August 20, 2026): Sixteen fixes in one: desktop clicks work again in click-driven games, big built-out worlds run much smoother while you build, scripted movers stop freezing in long-running multiplayer rooms, long multiplayer music stops dying after a second, riders stay seated instead of running in place, rotations stick while you drag, 2D characters stop flashing white between animations, spawn-storms no longer flood the room, and pause menus can catch the first Esc.
v5.2.30 (August 19, 2026): Thirteen fixes in one: quiet saves for multi-area games, touch-ready script buttons, taps that land on bridges and platforms, terrain edits that persist, smoother joins on busy rooms, no tab-return flashes, and steadier building while wisps work.
v5.2.29 (August 17, 2026): Everything since 5.2.26 in one release: big worlds stop melting down in multiplayer, Savi sees when and why the engine slows something down on purpose, missing and ghost objects repair themselves, and script math is exact again.
v5.2.26 (August 16, 2026): Terrain edits now sync reliably in always-on worlds. Players who rejoin get the terrain exactly as it was edited — edits made by scripts or by players who have since left no longer silently vanish on rejoin. And freshly edited chunks rebuild ahead of background work, so digs and builds turn solid and visible faster even while the world is busy streaming.
v5.2.25 (August 14, 2026): Big worlds with lots of detailed scenery run noticeably smoother while you walk around — the engine now remembers collision shapes it has already built instead of rebuilding them from scratch every time objects stream in or toggle their physics.
v5.2.24 (August 14, 2026): Players in other places can now receive state. The classic pattern — queue the party in the lobby, warp to the arena, then tell everyone their match — just works: patchObjectState(playerId, {...}) reaches a player anywhere in the room, and the new getPlayerPlace(playerId) tells you whether someone left the game (null) or is just in another place. No more heartbeats, shepherds, or ticket systems to work around invisible teammates.
v5.2.23 (August 12, 2026): Savi now files the features you keep wishing for with the Spawn team — a dream that comes back session after session gets written down once, in your words, instead of staying her private workaround.
v5.2.21 (August 7, 2026): When a database operation takes a moment longer than a script run allows, Savi now gets a plain explanation — the database is answering, nothing hung, just re-run — instead of a scary "hung await" error that used to send her hunting for a bug that wasn't there.
v5.2.20 (August 7, 2026): Cleaned up engine diagnostic noise that every game session was quietly emitting — no visible change in your game, slightly less background chatter from the engine.
v5.2.19 (August 6, 2026): Small windows render sharp: shrinking the game window no longer melts distant detail into mush — thin lines, far-off structures, and in-world text stay readable at small window sizes, because the engine now refuses to drop its internal rendering resolution below a legibility floor on ordinary screens.
v5.2.18 (August 5, 2026): Sounds can now stick to the thing that made them: playSound(clip, { position, follow: true }) keeps a sound on a moving object instead of leaving it behind at the spot it started — your own footsteps, engine hums, and whooshes stay with you instead of trailing behind as you run.
v5.2.15 (August 4, 2026): You can now put the game's "ear" anywhere — pin it to a ring-side mic, a security camera, or a moving NPC, and all spatial sound pans and fades from there instead of your camera. One place setting, and clearing it puts the ear right back.
v5.2.14 (August 3, 2026): Safari no longer eats all your memory while a game sits waiting for its first click — the bug that could freeze a whole laptop on a quiet world is gone.
v5.2.13 (August 1, 2026): Cameras are yours now, all the way down. Savi writes your camera as a script she can read and edit — every zoom, follow, and framing choice is a line she can change — instead of flipping switches on fixed camera presets. Existing games keep playing exactly as they are; when a world upgrades to this version, Savi rewrites its camera as a script with the same feel.
v5.2.12 (July 31, 2026): Buttons work on phones now. Action buttons Savi builds — especially in scrollable lists — used to die in mobile touch handling: you'd tap and nothing happened. The engine owns the tap now: a tap fires exactly once, a real scroll stays a scroll, and every existing game heals with no edits.
v5.2.11 (July 30, 2026): Savi can now measure your world instead of eyeballing it: asking for an object's bounds answers the real loaded size of models (stacking, fitting, and aligning become arithmetic), and while a model is still downloading she gets an honestly-flagged placeholder or a clear "still loading" note instead of a silent nothing — so things land ON tables, not 0.18m into them.
v5.2.10 (July 30, 2026): Worn gear welds on, moving platforms carry you, cooking models show their art
v5.2.9 (July 29, 2026): Saves stop storming, cities stop blinking, Safari plays
v5.2.8 (July 28, 2026): Power lines plant their poles again
v5.2.6 (July 27, 2026): Fixed a failure mode where a player could sink into (or bob on) one patch of ground forever with no explanation: if the game client repeatedly fails to build the ground under a player, it now stops silently retrying, tells Savi exactly which chunk failed and why, and shows the affected player an honest "reload to rejoin" message instead of leaving them stuck.
v5.2.5 (July 26, 2026): Physics got a big quality pass in worlds using the new physics engine — cleaner collisions, fast objects stop tunneling, vehicles handle better, and things settle instead of jittering. Busy worlds also run noticeably cheaper.
v5.2.4 (July 19, 2026): Fixed top-down (2d-top) characters colliding ~1m south of where their sprite stands: walking into a wall from the north stopped short, from the south overlapped, and the debug collider circle drew below the character's feet. Colliders now sit exactly at the sprite's feet regardless of the object's rotation.
v5.2.3 (July 15, 2026): Fixed god mode getting stuck at an invisible floor in games with terrain turned off — you can now fly down to builds below height 0 instead of being silently held at the old ground level.
v5.2.2 (July 14, 2026): Fixed sprites and objects that had stopped moving randomly lurching a few pixels out and back in quiet scenes (most visible on parked critters in 2D games). Resting entities now hold their position exactly until they actually move again.
v5.2.1 (July 14, 2026): Growing black patches are gone. On some machines, dark blotches could appear on screen (worst at night) and spread until they swallowed the whole view — reloading didn't help. Fixed at the source, for good.

engine v5.1: Connection

Released June 18, 2026. Your game listens to you first — movement and actions respond the instant you press them, and multiplayer holds steady through the busy moments. A full rebuild of how players stay in sync, plus dozens of touches to sound, saving, and Savi's tools along the way. read

v5.1.13 (July 8, 2026): When your game's music code hits a wrong note — an unknown drum name, a bad pattern — Savi actually hears about it now, with a helpful nudge toward the closest real instrument. And "tabla" just works.
v5.1.12 (July 7, 2026): Fixed a reconnect trap that could freeze a player's world forever: if the room restarted while a tab stayed open, that player could get stuck repairing hundreds of times and never recover without a reload. Recovery now works in one clean step.
v5.1.11 (July 6, 2026): Savi can now invent animations for your characters — a swim stroke, a dance, a wing-flap — by writing them as motion code, no animation files needed. They play (and blend) just like regular animations, and edits take effect at the next loop so nothing pops mid-motion.
v5.1.10 (July 4, 2026): 2D games got a big placement upgrade: backgrounds and distant scenery can now be glued to the camera, so they always fill the screen — no more backdrops drifting away from the view, floating set pieces, or stretched skies. Repeating strips tile seamlessly across the whole view, parallax layers slide at their own speeds, and everything holds up at any screen shape from tall phones to ultrawide.
v5.1.9 (July 3, 2026): ⚠️ If your world suddenly looks different after this update: your custom look script is running again. It was silently crashing on the last few engine versions (since around 5.1.5), so your world was rendering with no look applied at all. The crash is fixed and your authored look applies again — that new appearance is your own look script working. If it feels off (too dark, too bright, too saturated), ask Savi to retune the exposure — don't delete the look.
v5.1.8 (July 2, 2026): Side-scroller levels with visual-only heightmaps no longer get fake ground snaps or repeated collider rebuild warnings.
v5.1.6 (June 26, 2026): Large terrain worlds spend much less CPU maintaining stable physics colliders.
v5.1.5 (June 23, 2026): Bloom is now much more performant.

engine v5.0: For Real

Released June 4, 2026. A million particles, real skies, enemies with brains — the world got real, and Savi can build all of it. The biggest engine release yet. read

v5.0.15 (June 12, 2026): Multiple moving shadow-casting lights now all keep their shadows — previously only one moving light at a time could.
v5.0.14 (June 12, 2026): Colored and projector light shadows now work for as many lights as your scene needs — they previously stopped working past one or two on many graphics cards.
v5.0.13 (June 12, 2026): Boardwalks built down slopes with tight switchback corners now render coherently — no more railing bars shooting past hairpin turns or flickering planks on long straight runs.
v5.0.12 (June 12, 2026): Sounds in 2D games are actually audible now! Dig thunks, impacts, and pickups were playing at a tiny fraction of their volume because the game listened from the camera instead of your character.
v5.0.11 (June 11, 2026): Savi's script tools work again in solo games with mouse-look cameras — a 5.0.10 regression broke her ability to run scripts there.
v5.0.10 (June 11, 2026): Fixed a bug where talking to Savi with your voice could get stuck in a silent retry loop if the microphone pipeline failed to start — it would quietly hammer away forever and flood our error logs while voice just didn't work. Now it tries a few times, tells you plainly that voice is off for this session, and typing keeps working (reloading the page may bring voice back). Quick tap-and-re-hold on the mic can no longer be mistaken for a real failure.
v5.0.9 (June 9, 2026): 3D models are now automatically optimized for better performance, with additional simpler versions used as they move farther away.
v5.0.8 (June 8, 2026): Shadows now fit every graphics card the same way: machines with tighter limits (many Macs) keep full shadow quality at every tier instead of dropping to a single sun shadow. Secondary sun shadows in big worlds render slightly smaller on low and medium quality.
v5.0.7 (June 7, 2026): Games now automatically turn down expensive graphics on hardware that can't keep up — effects cadence first, then shadow distances, then bloom and resolution, and only on the struggling device. Same game, same content, smooth on more machines; the device remembers where it landed so the next session starts there.

engine v4.6: Atelier

Released June 1, 2026. A real workshop for god mode — tabbed tools, undo/redo, and richer material looks. read

engine v4.5: Surface Tension

Released May 22, 2026. Water you can swim in, and shapes that look like the real thing. read

v4.5.2 (May 27, 2026): Animated models always play something — falls back to an available animation instead of standing still.
v4.5.1 (May 23, 2026): Ponds run much smoother without changing how they look.

engine v4.4: Solid

Released May 15, 2026. Things stack right, worlds load clean, and clicks land where you point. read

v4.4.3 (May 21, 2026): Fixed some characters appearing too small.
v4.4.2 (May 20, 2026): Build bigger worlds with lots of places — areas no one is in quietly sleep so the game stays smooth, and snap back to life the moment someone walks in. Your spawn area is always ready.
v4.4.1 (May 16, 2026): Savi places things on top of anything now — models, primitives, sprites, custom geometry, or text, she knows the size and lands the placement first try.

engine v4.3: Groovy

Released May 13, 2026. Savi is your DJ now. God mode, movement, and controls all feel right read

v4.3.1 (May 13, 2026): Walls and floors are back in 3D Rooms games. Players land cleanly, walls stop the player, and skeletons stand on the floor instead of falling into it.

engine v4.2: Continuum

Released May 9, 2026. Saved games, smoother animation, sharper aim, and a basket of polish fixes you'll feel right away. read

engine v4.1: Foundations

Released May 4, 2026. First big engine update. Faster, smoother, smarter — and a small mountain of fixes. read

engine v0.1: Genesis

Released April 29, 2026. Initial versioned engine release. read