There has been so much going on at Phaser Studio over the past couple of months that we felt this single post would be a good way to group it all together! So let's dive in with this chunky little batch.
Phaser v4 Release Candidate 4 is out!
Massive mobile performance gains and memory optimizations mark the last RC before the official v4 launch. This version was an epic amount of work from the team. From lots of device testing leading to mobile performance gains, filter improvements, memory improvements. You name it, we probably improved it! You can read the full details here:
https://phaser.io/news/2025/05/phaser-v4-release-candidate-4
What's more, we also gave the Phaser Labs an overhaul too!
Part of the work completed involved checking every single example against Phaser 4. Those that broke, we fixed. Those that needed updating, we updated. And those that used features no longer present in v4 (such as the Mesh Game Object) were removed. We then merged in all of the brand new Phaser 4 examples, especially around Filters, gave the interface a new lick of paint and pushed it all up. Check it out at https://labs.phaser.io - you can still go to the 'old' labs site using the links on the home page, should you need to.
We're confident RC4 is the final version. It has everything in that we wanted. However, the more eyeballs we can get on it, the better - so we could really do with your help testing! You can download a build from GitHub or npm, you can use the new Labs to run thousands of examples that have been updated for it and you can also use it in the Phaser Sandbox. Our plan is to set this version remain with the community for the next two weeks or so. During this time, we will monitor new issues posted to GitHub and then sweep through them for the final build.
Phaser v3.90 is out!
We can't have Phaser v4 stealing all of the limelight! So we're happy to present the latest Phaser v3 release. This version brings several developer-friendly features that make game creation smoother. The standout addition is rounded corner support for Rectangle Shape Game Objects through the new setRounded() method, giving developers more visual flexibility without custom graphics. Audio capabilities get a boost with Firefox fallback support for positional audio, ensuring the WebAudioSound follow feature works consistently across browsers.
https://phaser.io/news/2025/05/phaser-v390-released
This is very likely to be the last version of Phaser v3. All development from the team going forward will be exclusively on Phaser v4 and that is where all new features will land as well. Given how well established version 3 is now, we don't believe there are any major bugs left in it. However, if a browser API update happens to dramatically break it, we will look at that. Otherwise, v4 is now our only focus.
Phaser Beam is Coming - Waitlist now Open
We've been really hard at work on Phaser Beam - our first ever "no code" game creation tool. This new tool uses an infinite-grid approach to allow you to place and organise elements, and then use them in your games. It's really quite neat - and it has been a fun challenge making something designed for non-coders that can still produce fun games.
The waitlist for Beam is now open at https://beam.game and we'll be pulling in our first beta group soon.
Oh, and for those of you who've been here a while - previously "Beam" was the name we gave to the Phaser 4 renderer. The plan was that we would release the renderer entirely on its own, which is why we named it. However, this will not be happening now, so we were left with a beautiful logo and no-where to deploy it, so we nicked it for the name of this product! From now on, if you see any of the team talking about Phaser Beam, they are refering to our 'no code' game editor. Not the Phaser 4 renderer. Although internally, it does use Phaser 4! Ahh.. Phaser inception :)
Phaser Templates Updated
Thousands of you are now using our Phaser Templates! Our anonymous telemetry shows us that a Phaser game is built with one of our templates every 40 seconds. That's quite amazing really!
For those new to Phaser, these are our official starter templates for combining Phaser with popular front-end frameworks and bundlers such as React, Vue or Vite. We recently overhauled them which allowed for a more unified approach. One of the coolest improvements (for us anyway!) is how we've reorganized our template structure.
We now have two common Phaser templates that work as shared foundations, which makes everything more consistent and easier to maintain, creating a clean divide between vanilla JavaScript/TypeScript templates and our framework-based ones.
This allowed us to quickly update every single template to the latest versions of the respective front-ends or bundlers. Plus, of course, we updated them all for Phaser v3.90 too!
For those using React or Angular, don't worry - we've kept the eventbus system that helps your web components talk smoothly with Phaser scenes.
https://phaser.io/news/2025/05/bringing-our-phaserjs-templates-into-the-future
We will be releasing Phaser v4 versions of all our templates when 4.0.0 ships.
Phaser Tauri Template
Talking of templates - we've a new one for you to try! This shows how to use Phaser with Tauri. Tauri allows you to create desktop apps that run natively on Windows, macOS or Linux. It's similar to Electron, which you may have heard of, except it uses the system web view and is created in Rust, making it smaller and lighter. This also makes it a great choice for bundling Phaser games for Steam! To help you on this journey, have a play with our Beta Tauri Template:
https://github.com/phaserjs/template-tauri
Phaser Launcher Update
Phaser Launcher is our free beginner friendly all-in-one dev environment for Phaser games. It bundles a code editor, media browser, project manager, help files, tutorials, templates and game runner. And we recently gave it an update to add some Quality of Life improvements to it. Thousands of you are using this every single day, which is really encouraging to see!
If you've never tried it before here is a new Tutorial video on our official YouTube channel. Whether you're completely new to coding or just looking for a friendly introduction to Phaser you're in the right place. This tutorial will guide you from absolute beginner to a somewhat confident creator in no time using Phaser Launcher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJINisdEaAk
And also here is this great new video from the YouTube legend that is Scott Westover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdEwhTcei2k
Naturally, the latest release has been updated for Phaser v3.90 and we will do another when Phaser v4.0.0 ships as well.
GameDev.js Jam 2025 Winners
Gamedev.js Jam 2025 was the sixth yearly edition of the online web game development competition, and like last year Phaser Studio was proud to support it with $1000 worth of prizes to be won. The competition wrapped up on April 26th with a record breaking 420 submitted games - 69 of which were entered into the "Build with Phaser" category! We're really proud of our Phaser community and what they created and had lots of fun playing the entries in order to pick our Top 4 games. You can see these in our official video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY6-vlnbaSU&t=1s
And if you'd like to see the full Top 14 winners list, please see here: https://itch.io/c/5753957/phaser-studios-top-picks
Phew.. and that's a wrap!