Kaboom.js is now Kaplay

Hi everyone, I have some news to share!

Kaboom.js (a JavaScript library for making games quickly and the library I have been using for a while) is now being rebranded to Kaplay.

Why?

Kaboom was originally created by Tiga Wu at Replit. Unfortunately, Tiga was recently laid off and Replit has decided to no longer pursue Kaboom’s development.

Fortunately, the Kaboom.js community has decided to continue its development under a new name Kaplay.

Here are the reasons why it’s being rebranded to Kaplay :

• Replit retains control of the Kaboom repo and doc site and won’t transfer it to the community.

• Replit registered the “Kaboom” name as a trademark in the past.

• The Kaboom community wants to be fully independent from Replit. Picking a different name allows for a clear separation between Replit owned Kaboom and the community’s version.

What does it mean for my previous tutorials?

I have made plenty of gamedev tutorials using Kaboom on YouTube. You might be wondering if they’re still worth watching? The answer is yes because Kaplay can act as a drop-in replacement for Kaboom.

If you’re using a script tag to import Kaboom you can replace it with :

import kaboom from "https://unpkg.com/kaplay@3000.1.17/dist/kaboom.mjs"

kaboom()

If you’re using NPM, you can install kaplay@3000.1.17 and import it instead of kaboom like this :

import kaboom from "kaplay";

kaboom();

add([
    text("oh hi"),
    pos(80, 40),
]);

That’s it!

Conclusion

Here are important links regarding Kaplay :

• Kaplay has its own website & playground you can visit here. (It’s still a work in progress so you can continue using the Kaboom.js docs in the meantime.)

• You can join the Kaplay discord server here (It’s the same as the Kaboom discord server, it was also recently rebranded) to ask questions and see how the development of Kaplay progresses.

• Kaplay’s NPM page can be viewed here.

• Kaplay is also open source like Kaboom. The repo can be viewed here.

Thanks for reading! If you’ve discovered Kaplay/Kaboom just now, here are a few other posts worth checking out.