Worldstart

Kauaʻi in the game: a hero in the long grass by the Start ring, a waterfall through it and jungle behind

Build islands. Race for treasure.

A fantasy island builder and team treasure race. Land with friends, fight monsters and rival teams with swords, bows and magic, and claim the gold. Then design a raid for your friends to try.

Download for macOSVersion 0.28.23, 314 MB. Apple Silicon and Intel.

WindowsComing soon

Early playtest. Download the published build below, expect rough edges, and tell us what breaks.

Race for the treasure

Land with your team, cross an island full of monsters and rival players, and claim the gold before anyone else does. That’s PvPvE: your team against both other teams and the world.

Claiming the treasure: a hero at the open chest of gold under a beam of light, a waterfall behind and the Lanternhorn closing in

A race across the island

Teams of four, 32 players a raid. The treasure sits by a boss at the island's heart: stand at it, alone and unhurt, and it's yours. Bots fill every empty spot, so a raid is always full, and another team is always on the ridge.

A warrior in the middle of three Thornbacks, their red striped attack rings on the grass, with a pixel-art teammate fighting beside him

Fights with weight

Swords, bows and magic. Monsters telegraph, attacks commit, and a pack of Thornbacks will flatten a team that stands in the red. Grab a scroll from the grass for one huge spell, and save it for the boss, or for the team that got there first.

Players in Start Plaza under the rainbow totem, beside the portals

Meet your team in Start Plaza

Find your friends, pick a team and head out to a raid. Everyone looks different here: a pixel warrior, a low-poly archer and an anime mage on the same bench.

A farm to come home to

Grow, fish and sell to Pip between raids, and bring your team home after one.

Looks, not levels

No grinding for power. The gold you win buys new looks, never an edge, and every one works on every character.

Build the world

Design the next treasure race, test it with bots, and build the game alongside other players.

The raid island editor: flying over Kauaʻi with the treasure, the boss and monster packs marked as coloured beams

Build the islands

The current editor starts with Kauaʻi. From your farm, lay out the treasure, team landings, monsters and scrolls. Ask the builder for a change in plain words, or place it yourself. Press T to test the layout with bots. More island variety and wider building tools are in development.

The forge: Worldstart's code, issues and pull requests, with the builders who made it

Build the game, with your agent

Worldstart is built with its players. Connect your AI agent through the forge to propose new monsters, new looks and fixes as your character. Contributions go through review before release, and accepted work carries its builder's name.

Open the forge · Connect your agent

Who you'll be

Human, elf, zombie, rabbit or dog, in whatever colors you like, drawn pixel, low-poly or anime.

Concept art by Mike. Every one of them is playable today; the game draws them its own way.

What's new

See what’s changed in the latest released build.

8 November 2026Version 0.28.23
Your party takes a bow
After a win: your team on stage under confetti, LEVEL 2! on your card as your XP bar fills, LEVEL UP! on your friend's, and a gold ribbon for whoever brought it home
After a loss: the same line-up, waving and clapping the winners, with where your team came at the top
- The end of a raid now opens on Your party: your team standing in a line, in the looks they raced in, cheering under confetti when you win and clapping the winners when you don't.
- Under each of them, big: rivals downed, damage, gold brought home and the XP they earned. Anyone who levelled up gets a LEVEL UP!, and whoever stood out gets a gold ribbon: brought it home, spared a rival, banked the most, carried the treasure, hit hardest or got a friend back up.
- Your own card fills your XP bar, pops your new level when you reach it, and counts the coins the raid brought in.
- Every team is the other tab: the full board, as before. Switch with Tab, Q and E, a click, or a controller's bumpers or D-pad. Play again stays right where it is (and still first, so Enter or A takes you straight back in).
8 November 2026Version 0.28.22
Smooth aiming
- Aiming a drawn bow is smooth now. On a fast screen your hero turned and walked in little steps, and the reticle shook from side to side as you turned the camera, which felt like low frame rate. Your hero and the reticle now keep up with every frame.
8 November 2026Version 0.28.21
Aim the bow up and down
Drawing on a rival up a grassy slope: the reticle is red on them, the camera tucked in over the archer's shoulder
- Your bow aims where you look now, up and down too. Draw, put the reticle on a rival up on a ridge or a monster down the slope, and let go. (Arrows used to fly level at chest height whatever the camera did.)
- Arrows have weight: they arc a little on the way, and the reticle shows where the arc really lands, so aim the reticle at the target and the arrow curves onto it. They're real arrows, so a runner far off needs a lead. Taps still help you aim; a full draw is all you.
- While you draw you can look further up, and the camera tucks in over your shoulder instead of dipping into the ground (or a river) behind you.
- A full draw looks and sounds like one: a thicker arrow with a glowing trail you can see from behind, a deep thrum as it leaves, a whoosh as one goes past you, and a thunk where it lands, different for a body, the ground and stone. A full draw's hit rocks the target and freezes it a beat. Arrows that miss stick in the ground for a moment.
- Every sound in the game varies a little each time now, and the bow's come in a few recorded takes, so a volley doesn't sound like a machine gun.