2025 has been another landmark year for our team and community, filled with exciting growth, major releases, and long-requested features coming to life. Open Dev Kit took some huge steps forward with the release of brand-new demos like the Space Shooter and 3D Platformer, along with fully immersive VR functionality powered by 3D physics. We also kicked off Community Showcases to better highlight the incredible projects being built by you, and reached a major milestone by bringing 001 Game Creator to the Epic Games Store. More recently, we’ve been laying the groundwork for deeper input support and more immersive feedback in 001 Game Creator, with features that will begin rolling out in 2026 after further testing. As the year comes to a close, we’re taking a moment to look back on everything we’ve accomplished together in this 2025 Year-in-Review.
We kicked off 2025 by continuing to expand Open Dev Kit’s growing library of hands-on learning content. In January, Patreon supporters received early access to a brand-new Space Shooter demo, inspired by the original 001 Game Creator project but rebuilt to take full advantage of Open Dev Kit’s more advanced systems. Designed to run in both 2D and 3D, the demo showcased smoother mechanics, improved visuals, and a more flexible structure, giving developers a powerful reference point for building fast-paced action games of their own.
February turned out to be a big month for Open Dev Kit. A series of major updates focused heavily on stability, workflow improvements, and expanding what creators could do under the hood. Across these releases, Open Dev Kit saw meaningful progress in areas like input handling, object control, editor reliability, and system-level improvements, reinforcing its role as a more robust and scalable development environment. These updates also laid important groundwork for several larger features that would arrive later in the year.
In March, we shared one of the most exciting development updates yet: a first look at fully immersive VR gameplay in Open Dev Kit, powered by 3D physics and full controller support. This upcoming VR demo introduced mechanics such as object grabbing and throwing, interactive menus, movement systems, and physics-driven interactions, all designed to show how VR experiences can be built directly within Open Dev Kit. Alongside this preview, we revealed that the update included a massive wave of fixes and optimizations, resolving memory leaks, crashes, and introducing new physics movement functionality that significantly expanded what was possible in 3D projects.
April marked an important moment for the community itself with the launch of our very first Community Showcase. This new initiative was created to frequently highlight projects made by our users, share development stories, and celebrate creativity across a wide range of genres. The response was quite positive, and the showcase quickly became a recurring way for developers to share their progress, get visibility, and connect with others in the community.
Screenshot game Dungeon Mori made by our lovely user “FilthyDrawings”!
Check out their game’s thread on our Discord server here:
https://discord.com/channels/168417207989043200/1254669998144880670
Get their game on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3597590/Dungeon_Mori/
Momentum continued into May with another substantial Open Dev Kit update, bringing even more VR-focused improvements, additional tools, continued stability refinements and a fun little VR demo. With VR becoming a great addition of Open Dev Kit’s evolution, this update helped solidify the engine’s ability to support immersive experiences while remaining flexible enough for traditional 2D and 3D development.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcSzu7xwuk8
One of the biggest milestones of the year arrived in August, when 001 Game Creator officially launched on the Epic Games Store. This marked a major expansion for the engine, opening the door to a new audience of creators and introducing Epic-specific build options alongside new achievement and stat events. Bringing 001 to Epic Games Store was an important step forward, giving developers more choice in how they distribute their projects while further growing the engine’s ecosystem.
Check out its store page here: https://store.epicgames.com/p/001-game-creator-eabf55
That same month, Open Dev Kit received another major update alongside the release of its official documentation. This marked a huge leap forward in accessibility, providing creators with a growing library of guides, references, and walkthroughs covering everything from basic editor usage to advanced systems and templates. Combined with new data structures, improved JSON handling, and expanded AI tooling, this update made it easier than ever to build complex, data-driven projects.
August also marked a special moment in our history: 001 Game Creator’s 20th anniversary. What began as a free tool back in 2005 has grown into a full-featured engine used by hobbyists, professionals, and educators alike. Celebrating two decades of development gave us the opportunity to reflect on how far the engine and the community around it has come.
As the year moved into fall, several updates focused on polishing and reliability. New public versions of 001 Game Creator addressed long-standing edge case issues, improved resource editor stability, ensured large maps behaved correctly even when heavily zoomed, refined actor movement with acceleration, and fixed data consistency issues related to saved games. These updates emphasized reliability and long-term project stability, particularly for larger or more complex games.
We closed out the year with a teaser regarding a long-requested feature. Only a few weeks ago, Patreon supporters have gotten an early look at upcoming controller vibration and force feedback support for 001 Game Creator. Alongside new vibrate events and use-values, we also introduced XInput support (other one being DirectInput), significantly improving controller compatibility and input precision. This also resolves a long-standing issue where both gamepad triggers were incorrectly merged into a single input, allowing them to finally be handled independently as intended. These improvements are currently being tested and refined, with plans to roll them out more broadly and across additional platforms in 2026.
Thank you for your support!
What a truly incredible year 2025 has been! From major platform milestones to meaningful community growth, this year has shown just how far both 001 Game Creator and Open Dev Kit have come, and how much exciting potential still lies ahead. With 001 continuing to evolve into its most refined and capable form yet, Open Dev Kit pushing further into advanced systems like VR, AI adoption and next-generation workflows, 2026 is already shaping up to be an exciting chapter in our journey.
As we wrap up the year, we want to extend our heartfelt thanks to our incredible community. None of this would be possible without the continued support of our Patreon members, supporters and passionate creators. Your feedback, projects, and enthusiasm drive everything we do, and we’re constantly inspired by the creativity we see across the community.
From everyone here at SoftWeir, we wish you a wonderful New Year filled with creativity, inspiration, and exciting new projects. Here’s to another fantastic year of building, experimenting, and bringing amazing ideas to life together in 2026!
With sincere gratitude and appreciation,
The SoftWeir Team
