Farewell, 2016! It seems that WebGL was everywhere last year, spreading across every corner of the web. And this added up to PlayCanvas’ best year yet!

Big Name Users

The last twelve months have seen some incredible companies adopt PlayCanvas. Here’s our pick of the bunch:

Disney selected PlayCanvas for the Moana-themed Hour of Code

King published Shuffle Cats Mini as a launch title for Facebook Instant Games

Miniclip published the fiendish Virtual Voodoo on their portal:

Leapfrog launched the Leapfrog Academy subscription service

Leapfrog Academy

Nickelodeon published the TMNT game Turflytle

Universal launched the movie Ride Along 2 with a PlayCanvas-powered Truck Tour:

https://vimeo.com/152996271

So what’s attracting incredible companies like these to PlayCanvas? It’s because they need WebGL tooling that works. Other game engines have let them down and PlayCanvas is delivering the technology they need.

2016 Tech Updates

Here are our top 5 picks for PlayCanvas tech improvements during 2016:

Scripts 2.0 with hot reloading, collaborative coding and parallel on-device testing:

Integrated WebVR support with optimized stereo rendering:

Runtime generated lightmaps to bake lighting on app startup for fast rendering.

One-click texture compression to enable the loading of far more texture data.

REST API for automating development tasks via script.

Cool Games

Plenty of PlayCanvas games have been released during 2016 but we have to give special mention to Midgard’s BlastArena! It pays homage to the classic Bomberman with frenetic, insanely fun online play.

And we have to give special mention to our own online multiplayer game TANX! 2016 saw the game receive a massive upgrade, with stunning new visuals and level design.

PlayCanvas continues to race ahead as the leading platform for building lightweight, mobile-friendly WebGL content. We’ve got lots of surprises in store for 2017 and we can’t wait to share them with you. Happy New Year everyone!