Game engine · Pre-alpha

LUNA

A lightweight, text-first game engine built on Godot. Unreal's gameplay framework, Unity's component workflow and a built-in AI assistant, in one small, portable editor.

  • Pre-alpha
  • Windows first
  • Hard fork of Godot 4.7

About Luna

Luna is our game engine: a hard fork of Godot, rebuilt for how we want to make games.

We pruned Godot 4.7 to what Luna needs and kept its proven foundations: the renderers, Jolt physics, asset import, export and the editor UI toolkit. On top of those we built an Unreal-style gameplay framework and Unity-style component editing.

How you build

Standard pieces, not blank nodes.

Every project starts from the same vocabulary: Level, Actor, Pawn, Character, Controller and Game Mode. Controllers possess Pawns, the Game Mode sets the rules, and no one starts from an empty tree.

Illustration

Compose in the Inspector.

Colliders, physics bodies, sprites, cameras, audio and scripts are components you add to an Actor, not child nodes. Ready-made Behaviors like Platformer, Top-down and Health snap on the same way, and an object can carry several scripts.

Illustration, not a screenshot

Design pillars

  1. 01

    Standard pieces

    Level, Actor, Pawn, Character, Controller and Game Mode in every project, from the first minute.

  2. 02

    Compose in the Inspector

    Behaviour is components and scripts on an Actor, edited as cards, not a tree of child nodes.

  3. 03

    Everything is text

    Levels and Actor classes save as clean, readable text that diffs well and is safe for a person or an AI to edit.

  4. 04

    Small and portable

    One editor executable. No installer and no account.

  5. 05

    AI as a first-class panel

    Optional and toggleable, on your own subscription or API key. The engine exposes its own tools to AI agents.

  6. 06

    Sleek and dense

    A professional dark editor theme in the spirit of modern pro tools.

What it borrows

  • Unreal

    The Actor, Pawn, Character, Controller and Game Mode framework, with possession.

  • Unity

    Components in the Inspector, with several scripts per object.

  • Construct

    Add-a-behaviour simplicity: Platformer, Top-down, Pickup.

  • Godot

    A single-binary editor and a permissive, open foundation.

Where it is now

Early development: pre-alpha, Windows first.

Foundation

Done
  • Godot 4.7 merged, pruned and rebranded to Luna
  • Windows build and CI
  • An engine-wide reflection registry
  • The first pass of the Luna editor theme

2D Level 1 · Playable core

Built, final gate pending
  • The Actor and component core, with 2D scene, physics and collider components
  • Pawn, Character, Player and AI Controllers, and the Game Mode
  • Behaviors: platformer and top-down movement, Health, Damageable, Pickup, Spawner, Timer and Rotate
  • Luna's own .level and .actor text formats, round-tripping byte for byte
  • Event connections and built-in reactions, wired without code from an Events tab
  • Inspector component cards and an Actor-first Scene panel
  • A Level Manager with async loading and transitions
  • Play from Here, pause, step frame and eject to a free camera
  • luna check, a headless project validator for CI and AI agents
  • A local, token-protected MCP server so AI agents can inspect the editor, run the game and take screenshots
  • A two-level sample platformer and a 2D Platformer project template

Roadmap

2D and 3D alternate, so 3D reaches parity with 2D at each stage.

  1. Foundation

    Done

    Godot 4.7 merged and pruned, rebranded, Windows build and CI, reflection registry, first editor theme.

  2. 2D Level 1

    Now

    A playable 2D game built only from Luna Actors, components, Behaviors and Events.

  3. Luna look and Level-first editor

    Planned

    Theme v2 and an icon set. New Level and New Actor become the starting points, with a Create menu, a radial context menu, drag previews and component presets.

  4. 3D Level 1

    Planned

    3D parity: 3D Actors and Characters, Jolt physics, third- and first-person movement.

  5. Level 2 · Production basics

    Planned

    Input rebinding, a camera manager, save games, debug tools, a content browser, a command palette, the AI panel, data tables, greybox tools, a game-feel toolkit and playtest builds.

  6. Level 3 · Content tools

    Planned

    Animation, a Sequencer, tile painting, a UI system, dialogue, quests, an ability system, visual diff and merge for Levels, and an asset cache.

  7. Level 4 · Scale and performance

    Planned

    Level streaming, a profiler, navigation and AI, C# support, a data-oriented swarm system and rewind debugging.

  8. Level 5 · Feature complete

    Planned

    Export polish, project templates, user documentation, a frozen plugin API, a Godot project converter and the Luna Hub.

Later tracks: visual scripting, a Luna scripting language, VR, Linux and macOS builds, and an asset store.

[LUNA SCREENSHOT]

Watch the repo.

Follow Luna's development as it happens.

Watch on GitHub