Introducing Flare Engine: one 2D codebase for iOS, Android, and the web

Flare is a modular 2D engine written in TypeScript. Its goal: let you write animation, gamification, and interactive UI once and run it across iOS, Android, and the web, from a single, SEO- and accessibility-friendly codebase.

On mobile, rendering runs through React Native and Shopify’s react-native-skia. On the web, the same code runs in the browser via CanvasKit (Skia compiled to WebAssembly) — the three interactive animations on this site’s homepage run the engine’s real packages (ECS, particles, animation, math, post-FX) live in your browser, not video. Their web renderer and physics are local precursors of the forthcoming @flare-engine/render-web and @flare-engine/simulation packages. One scene graph, one set of logic, across platforms.

Why it exists

Cross-platform teams keep rebuilding the same animated, gesture-rich surfaces (onboarding flows, animated dashboards, gamified loops) twice: once for the web, once for React Native. Flare is built to collapse that into one engine, so a canvas-driven experience you prototype for React Native also reaches the browser from the same codebase.

Under the hood it is 40 @flare-engine/* packages in a strict, downward-only layered monorepo: a 7-layer dependency graph with no cycles. You pull in only the layers you need.

Where it stands today

Honest status: Flare is at 0.2.1, published to npm with access: restricted. That is a real, versioned publish, but it is not publicly installable yet. What exists is a polished engine plus a showcase game built on top of it: Pan Tvardowski, a Polish-folklore vertical shmup used to dogfood the engine end to end. It is not on the app stores yet; it is how the engine gets exercised, not a shipped title.

Early days, and honest about it: one contributor, a niche cross-platform audience, and plenty still to prove before v1. Web performance in particular is still unmeasured.

The road ahead

The public launch (public npm packages, docs, and an announcement) is targeted for October 2026 — when the source repo opens, GitHub links go live, and a community Discord opens. Until then, this feed is where the build gets documented in the open: devlogs, design decisions, and milestones as they land.

Flare is built solo with AI-directed agents: the architecture and every decision are mine, the agents are the force multiplier. More soon.