Garry’s Mod and Rust developer Facepunch Studios has officially revealed s&box, their new game engine and platform, calling it “spiritual successor” to their previous sandbox creator.
The UK-based developer and publisher unveiled the Steam Page for s&box on Nov. 11, along with the following description: “Our spiritual successor to Garry’s Mod, this is a game creation platform built on the Source 2 engine.”
And while that’s definitely true, the platform apparently bears more resemblance to a more high-level version of Roblox, Dreams, or even the Dota 2 Arcade – a game creation platform bridging the gap between amateurs and professional developers. Although that description perhaps doesn’t do s&box justice.
Garry’s Mod Developers Unveil Spiritual Successor s&box
Image Credit: Facepunch Studios
In a trailer released alongside the Steam page, Facepunch showcased a number of games created within the platform, including retro-styled FPS Opium, Vampire Survivors-like Sausage Survivors, Counter-Strike analogies, and more besides.
But this is a far more advanced version of anything like that. With half a dozen development teams already ascribed to the platform, including names like Small Fish and Ape Tavern, Facepunch has already nurtured an entire ecosystem for its creator platform.
The games and s&box aren’t currently available to general gamers, as the platform is currently in what Facepunch are calling “Developer Preview.”
“We have made this cool editor, and all these tools to publish and play games, and we want to test them out. We already have hundreds of developers making games and giving feedback, and we’re updating and improving every day. It’s a big big job, but it’s what we love doing.”
Interested developers can head to the s&box website and sign up to join the preview. And if you’re looking for a more traditional sandbox experience from s&box, the Facepunch says it’s on its way.
After initially deciding against a user sandbox, the developer changed their mind: “the more we thought about it, the more we thought about a few new features that justify making it – so we’re currently working on that, and won’t release s&box until that’s done.”
So there you have it, a new version of Garry’s Mod – albeit it made in Source 2 with a c# layer on top rather than Source 1 with Lua on top.