Introduction

World Engine is a high-performance framework designed specifically for onchain, real-time games. It allows you to build games that run on their own dedicated “shards”, giving you the speed and complexity of a traditional game engine, while keeping your game fully secure and verifiable on the blockchain. This architecture unlocks a new generation of onchain games. From real-time strategy to physics-heavy simulations, World Engine empowers you to build complex, persistent worlds that were previously impossible to run on general-purpose blockchains.

​

Why World Engine?

Traditional blockchains are built around event-driven execution: a transaction arrives, the chain processes it, and only then does the state change. This model is too slow and too unpredictable for real-time games, where the world must update continuously and on a fixed schedule. World Engine takes a different approach. It introduces a tick-driven rollup protocol where the world updates on a fixed schedule, just like a real game engine. The world advances every tick, deterministically, regardless of how or when inputs arrive. This gives developers real-time performance without giving up security or verifiability. Games stay responsive because the protocol follows the same timing model as modern game engines.

​

Key Features

Built for Games World Engine is purpose-built for real-time games. It supports execution sharding and horizontal scalability, so your game can scale across multiple shards as needed. Built for Developers We provide end-to-end tooling designed for a smooth developer experience across the full cycle: building, testing, debugging, and deploying. With client SDKs, built-in auth, and managed deployment, everything is set up to help you iterate quickly. Built for Collaboration The ecosystem supports community plugins and preset shards for common game types. You can share components, extend existing shards, or build on top of what others have created.

​

The Cardinal Framework

Cardinal is our first implementation of the World Engine protocol, written in Go. It’s an ECS-based, tick-driven game server framework designed for writing high-performance, real-time games. If you’ve worked with engines like Unity, Unreal, or Bevy, Cardinal will feel familiar. It uses the same ECS architecture and tick-based execution model, so you can focus on building your game rather than wrestling with blockchain mechanics. The rest of this documentation will guide you through Cardinal’s core concepts and patterns.

​

Next Steps

Head over the the next page to learn how to install the World Engine and create your first game!