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Why is Unbound?

There are dozens of creative tools and engines out there these days. So… why make unbound?

Philosophy

Our team has been using creative tools and making games for decades which has led us to a few guiding principles.

  • Creators do their best work when the tool gets out of the way
  • Getting into creative flow is hard - staying in it is even harder
  • Making games is hard enough without having to master multiple tools (e.g. Unity + Blender)
  • Even if you master multiple tools, switching between them takes you out of creative flow
racing game made in unbound
racing game concept made in unbound

OK, so the promise of an all-in-one game engine may not be new but we believe the impetus behind unbound is. We’re not a platform like Roblox that wants you to make, play, and stay behind our walled garden. Make your games in unbound, share them wherever you want. Just like the modeling tools? No problem - export them to Unity, Godot, or Unreal.

Our goal is to make game development more joyful…

  • Sculpting with SDF is natural, expressive, and intuitive
  • Non-destructive SDF edits make editing, experimenting with, and remixing assets low-stakes. Everything is editable, always. No baking or stressing over export settings - because they’re made right in-engine 🙂
  • Requiring creators to master fewer tools lowers the bar of entry to game development
  • Reducing round trips to other tools keeps you in creative flow

Who is Unbound For?

Everyone! Not specific enough for you? That’s fair.

Unbound is aimed at creators who want to make 3D content or games but who don’t want to learn (or are tired of) complicated engineering software like Blender or Unity.

We’re not throwing shade, we use those tools too, but sometimes you want to create using something that feels more like a paintbrush and less like the cockpit of an airplane. It may not be 100% there yet but that’s the mission we’re on. If that interests you, please download it for free and drop by the unbound Discord to let us know what you love (or don’t love).

Prerequisites (none, really)

Unbound is designed to follow principles of “progressive disclosure”, meaning it can become as complex as you want it to be. Consider this cascading set of disclosures:

  • Level 1: Creator just wants to make art. Adding interactivity of any kind can be ignored and nothing technical stands in the way of making art.
  • Level 2: A non-coder wants to add some interactivity. They can drag and drop behaviors from our built-in library of logic blocks to bring their SDF models to life
  • Level 3: Perhaps after using logic blocks for a bit, a creator might want to peek into the code behind them. Without leaving unbound, creators can view and edit the code behind the logic blocks (don’t worry, we make copies - you can’t break anything). This allows the curious creator to draw parallels between logic blocks and their underlying code, which is great for learning as well as experimenting.
  • Level 4: If you’re a seasoned programmer and have a preferred IDE, you can code away to your heart’s content where you’re most comfortable.
  track parts sculpted in unbound  
track parts sculpted in unbound

We recognize that unbound creators can come in at any level and can choose to move between levels as it suits them. Each component of unbound is designed similarly to this to allow the user to drill in only as deeply as they’re comfortable.

Like most game engines, some prior programming knowledge would be helpful but it’s not required. If you’ve used Blender or other 3D modeling tools, you’ll feel right at home with familiar gizmos but you’ll quickly fall for the playfulness of SDF (or so we hope).

What Next?

Whether you’re a game developer who’d like to take a vacation from Unity or someone who has never made a game before, here are a couple of articles to help get you started.