New Game Engine s&box is a Successor to Garry’s Mod
Facepunch, the independent game studio founded by Garry Newman (Garry’s Mod, Rust), is working on a new game engine, s&box. Although it’s in heavy development, it’s available now on PC through the official site and already includes a wealth of features. These include sharing games, multiplayer capabilities, and monetization options.
S&box is built on Source 2, the SDK (Software Development Kit) created by Valve. It uses C# 13 scripting language, but for those not familiar with this there’s also ActionGraph, a visual no-code scripter. Both options are backed up by a modded version of Valve’s Hammer Editor, allowing for easier level creation.
“s&box isn’t Garry’s Mod 2. It’s built to eclipse what was possible before – not just modernise it,” Facepunch said on s&box’s official website. “We’re using Source 2 and everything we’ve learned from Source 1, Garry’s Mod, Unity, and Unreal to create a modern, intuitive, moddable game development environment.”
“Like Rust and Garry’s Mod, this is a long-term project. We’re building the platform we want to use ourselves – something we’ll work on and improve for the next couple of decades.”
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Garry Who?
Garry Newman, the head of Facepunch, is known in the industry for his blunt manner and active presence on social media. He has, of course, been promoting s&box, but also occasionally does things such as offer to buy assets from dead games, and offer game development advice.
His first game, Garry’s Mod, was released in 2004 and is often considered the first of its kind: a willfully chaotic sandbox built in Source 1. It’s still receiving updates, and allows for complete freeform physics-based play, as well as the creation of mods and standalone games. It also initially drew attention as it allowed users to import characters from Valve games like Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2, spawning countless memes and machinima.
This was followed by the official launch of Rust in 2018, one of the first survival/crafting games that is still known for its harsh PVP and unpredictable, emergent player stories. This game also continues to receive regular updates and has a particularly vibrant modding community.
S&box And Its Competitors
S&box enters an industry with no shortage of game engines, from heavy-hitters like Unity and Unreal, to Godot and GameMaker. Whether users want to also play in the engine, as with Roblox and the recently-released Brickadia, or potentially make money from their creations as with Buildbox and Defold, there’s now an option for pretty much any type of developer.
The game engine may still be in development but it already combines a lot of these ideas into one package. The Play Fund, for example, pays based on how long a game has been played, not due to ads or microtransactions. At the time of writing, Facepunch had already paid out over $85,510 to s&box users.
Users can also already find Hotloading, which shows changes made to code take place in real-time, so there’s no need to reload a project. There’s also an asset library available that doesn’t require downloads or a subscription – it’s possible to simply drag and drop something into a project.
Facepunch is also clear on what it’s working on for s&box in the future, including the ability to publish and sell a game made with the engine as a standalone product without any financial or licensing ties to s&box. Current plans are for s&box to release a full, public release in early 2026.
