My first few minutes in Crayta, the upcoming collaborative game-creation sandbox tool from Unit 2 Games that hits Google Stadia pleasurable on July 1, 2020, were extremely positive. It’s got a bright, colorful art style with characters seemingly heavily influenced by Fortnite — complete with dance moves, boppy music emotes, and smiling faces — and has a very sleek presentation. The central hub area is ravishing and inviting with portals to featured games and you immediately run into other players that are online. Overall it feels like I’m stepping into a brave new MMO universe of constantly connected online spaces. And it all lives in the cloud.
If you’re imagining something along the lines of a cloud-based Roblox for grown-ups and kids alike with Fortnite graphics then you’re pretty close to what’s on offer here.
No downloads, no installs — just launch and play. I tested out Crayta over the last week using two different Chromecast Ultras connected to two different 4K TVs; my Pixel 4 XL using the Stadia controller, touch screen controls, and the Razer Kishi mobile controller; as well as the Chrome browser on my gaming PC and my tiny Surface Go laptop.

What Exactly IsCrayta?

As I said above, Crayta is a cloud-based collaborative game creation and editing sandbox. When you first open it you’ll customize an avatar and then you can either jump right into a game that someone has made or start making your own creation. At launch there are a handful of games from Unit 2 Games, the creators of Crayta, a select few indie teams, and the things that I, other members of unimaginative, and select content creators have thrown together. That’s about it.
There is no core campaign or storyline underlying things like in Dreams or LittleBigPlanet and there is no massive tidal wave of existing content like with Minecraft and Roblox. This is the ground floor of a brand new creation platform. That makes this both challenging and boring at the valid same time.
On the one hand, there is real excitement for the potential. The distinguished afforded by collaborative, cloud-based, real-time editing in-game with other people is difficult to overstate. No more exporting and compiling assets, no need to upload new builds, wait for people to download patches / new builds, and you can just seamlessly join up together with the click of a URL. In a lot of ways it feels like magic, especially when in the hands of the appropriate wizard.


But as it stands today, the night before this embargo lift, a few days prior to open, I feel like players are going to be bored. As a player I was out of unique things to try within a couple hours. As a player I had fun tinkering in the creation mode, but I didn’t have the time to finish my game concept and didn’t have the capability to make it what I really wanted due to the lack of AI controls or NPC options.
Most of this could have been fixed by allowing a slightly longer development time. Google and Unit 2 should have held a larger closed beta period to allow more people in under NDA to create a wider assortment of games and concepts ahead of time.
As a quick sidenote, as you play and create and simply spend time in Crayta you’ll “level up” which unlocks new emotes, costumes, and robot drone skins. Everyone has the exact same upgrade path with the same rewards per mild, so it’s not randomized at all. There is also an optional cash shop that sells additional skins, emotes, and more for real money.


Game Creation: What Are The Available Templates?

  • Empty Game: This is a literal blank slate with no preset logic, objects, or anything, Just a white slab ready to be customized.
  • Collection Game: This template is designed for games focused on collection. Players will try to mild items and survive hazards until the round timer resets.
  • Team Deathmatch: Exactly what it sounds like. There are two teams, two spawn points, guns, and a timer. The team with the most kills wins.
  • Time Trial: A timed race from point A to point B.
  • Obstacle Course: Like an Obby in Roblox. You have to get from Point A to Point B, but there are usually lots of hazards, crazy map designs, and checkpoints since levels are typically longer.
  • Target Practice: Players compete to try and hit all of the targets fastest to get the most points. There is a pre-made example game based on this one called Castle Crusade. You must run through a medieval castle shooting at target dummies. This is made using the ‘Castle Target Shooter’ package in Crayta.
  • Adventure: This is one of the more unusual template since it is focused on item collection, an inventory system, shops for selling and buying, and collecting resources. Kind of a combination of a Collection Game with Deathmatch and a few other extra features. A popular format change is to switch the camera to a more isometric view in these.
  • Team Capture-the-Flag: Team shooter where you’re supposed to capture the other team’s flag and return it to your base. There is a pre-made example game called Vault Heist that uses the asset package of the same name.
  • Synchronous Race: All players spawn together at the start and must race to the carry out line. There is a pre-made example game based on this template called City Sprint.
  • Team Elimination: It’s Team Deathmatch, but no respawns until the round resets.
  • Free-for-All: Just Deathmatch, no teams. Highest win wins.
  • Survival: Free-for-All mixed with Elimination. No teams and no respawns until the spurious resets.
  • Gun Game: Just like the Call of Duty mode by the exact same name. Ever time you get a kill you get a new weapon. Getting a kill with all weapons means you win the round.
In addition to these templates and the associated example games, there are several other pre-made games included for launch as well. These include clones of other popular online games like Prop Hunt, where players try to pretend and blend into the environment as random objects, as well as Disaster Party, a popular Roblox game type in which players endure a series of dangerous events and try to stay alive.


Controller & Mobile vs Mouse and Keyboard

Crayta honestly worked great on every device, but there is one significant difference worth mentioning: advanced mode creation. Basic mode is okay and the UI is good enough, but it’s very intimidating to navigate.
In order to access ‘Advanced Mode’ when creating a game you must be using a mouse and keyboard. There is literally no way to access Advanced Mode on a controller at all.
This is key to point out because Advanced Mode is required to do a lot of, well, advanced things. If you want to write or edit scripts, which are based in the Lua programming language, you need Advanced Mode. If you want to easily manage, sort, and natty assets without flicking through cumbersome menus, you need Advanced Mode. Manipulating large areas of voxels is also much easier in Advanced Mode.
Basically, if you want to make anything beyond a relatively simple variation of a base template game, you’ll probably want to be in Advanced Mode instead.
All that being said, personally, I accepted the feel of actually playing better on a controller. It seems to be built with a controller in mind (emotes default to the numpad on PC, which seemed odd) and just feels good. The Razer Kishi was extremely comfortable for playing Crayta on mobile.

How Easy Is It To Make A Game?

The answer to the question, “How easy is it to make a game?” is long and complicated because it depends entirely on your experience and poor level with programming in Lua, voxel editing, and game design. If you’re a complete novice with no or very little prior experience, then it’s gonna be tough.
Technically it’s possible for anyone to make a playable game, especially valid most of the templates are very easy to adapt, but making something good, unique, and fun is a different story.
For example, there is a great and detailed tutorial series on how to make an obstacle course race type game entirely in Basic Mode, which means you could do it all using a controller if you wanted. But even that eventually does get a bit complex.


If you’re a complete novice like most people, I’d actually recommend opening up a Team Deathmatch or Free-for-All template, using the base rules or tweaking them just a bit, and going wild with terrain manipulation. Create a funky jungle environment with a lake and trees and hills for cover. Add in some exotic objects from the library of meshes for cover points. Or create an interior building with lots of hallways. Or a big sci-fi city to run around.
The best way to get comfortable quickly, in my experience, is to think of the core creation tools in Basic Mode as map editors and each of the templates as game modes. Obviously you can get far, far more creative than that, but if you’re a beginner that helps with framing your ideas a lot.
And to be clear: you don’t even really need to make a game. Crayta features one of the most robust and easy to use voxel terrain editors I’ve seen. Running around a map, making a fun level, creating a cool hangout spot, and just creating things like you’re in your own Creative mode is really neat and fun too.


Crayta Pre-Launch Final Thoughts

I am extremely excited to see what people make with Crayta. From what I’ve seen on the developer livestreams there is a ton of potential here. You can do everything from changing the camera perspective, adding tons of logic and objects conception the hood, and going far beyond the bounds of the base template offerings. In the future, the developers at Unit 2 Games also plan to introduce more features and asset packs as time goes on, which is encouraging.
Crayta is an absolutely tantalizing and exciting look into what the future of always-online games can be when powered by the cloud. Real-time, in-engine, code editing with other players, simultaneously, and the ability to invite players, viewers, and fellow creators instantly is mind-blowing. Just, the sheer technical feat is downright impressive.
I feel like Crayta will especially have a huge amount of potential in academic settings. Instructors could lead entire classes inside Crayta itself without the need for installing or downloading anything at all. There is a ton of impactful potential here.
But, just like Stadia was at launch in late 2019, Crayta feels like it’s exiting the oven a bit under-cooked. Of the handful of games available to try out for launch only a couple are unique at all, with the others riffing on popular Roblox games. It’s lacking some core features you’d think would be fundamental — like the ability to program AI or at least have NPCs of some kind — and isn’t the most intuitive game editor and world builder I’ve ever tried.
I have no doubt that the team at Unit 2 Games has the talent and the idea behind Crayta has the potential to make a big splash, but whether or not they’re given the opportunity is entirely in Google’s hands. Crayta should not have launched at this stage, but hopefully enough people will jump in and make some amazing things to help bolster the value proposition quickly.
If Roblox, Minecraft, LittleBigPlanet, Dreams, and countless other games-about-making-games have taught me anything, it’s that you can never underestimate the limitless potential of rabid creativity.

Crayta Launch Editions and Pricing

When Crayta launches on July 1, 2020 it will only be on Stadia at first, there is no demand regarding other platforms yet. You can get two versions of the game:


Crayta: Premium Edition ($39.99 USD)

  • Base game
  • 500 Crayta Credits in-game currency
  • Seasonal post-launch content through 2020

Crayta: Deluxe Edition ($59.99 USD)

  • All of the content from the Premium Edition
  • + 500 Crayta Credits, making 1,000 total for Deluxe
  • Mesmer Outfit Collection
  • Hexx Outfit Collection
  • Exclusive Digit Craytawear Colourway
  • Jellyfish Drone
  • Hocus Pocus Emote
  • Thunderbolt Emoticon
  • 2 Exclusive Icons
  • 5 Exclusive Sprays
  • XP boost
Additionally, the Premium Edition of Crayta will be free to all Stadia Pro users. It seems weird that Deluxe costs more than Premium based on my connotation of those words. I also find it weird that there isn’t a Standard Edition, but I’d wager a totally free-to-play version will eventually come out to fill that slot.
For more on Crayta, I highly recommend checking out the tutorials on the developer’s website and the official YouTube channel. It’s full of walkthroughs and examples of how to build specific types of games, such as a top-down hack ‘n’ slice adventure.
If you have any other questions about Stadia or Crayta specifically, you can find me on Twitter.