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Softfire

Introduction

Softfire is a MonoGame-based C# game engine with an integrated visual editor and a federated living-world platform called Worldweave. It is designed to let one team build games across many genres without maintaining separate engine codebases, and to connect those games into a shared online platform without requiring you to build your own backend infrastructure.

The two layers

Softfire is best understood as two layers that work together but can also be used independently.

The engine layer is a MonoGame runtime with an Entity-Component-System (ECS) architecture. It handles the game loop, content pipeline, input, audio, save/load, rendering, and all genre-specific gameplay systems. The editor (Softfire.MonoGame.Engine.Tools.Editor) is a desktop application that runs on top of the engine and provides a scene editor, prefab browser, asset importer, play-mode testing, and export tooling. You can use the engine without Worldweave — it functions as a standalone MonoGame framework.

The Worldweave platform layer provides everything you need for an online game: player identity, session relay, cross-game social features, achievements, ranked matchmaking, and the Living World simulation. Worldweave is a federated infrastructure built around three concepts: the Root (the canonical identity and session authority), Strands (regional relay and cache nodes that extend the Root’s reach), and The Loom (the distributed registry that knows about all Roots). Your game connects to the platform by including a WorldweaveClientConfig asset with your API key.

The two layers are independent at the code level but designed to complement each other. A game that uses Worldweave gains access to a persistent world simulation, shared player identity, and social features without writing any backend code. A game that skips Worldweave is still a fully functional Softfire-engine game.

Why Softfire exists

Building genre-breadth into a single engine — rather than forking the codebase for each game type — is the central design bet. A platformer and a turn-based strategy game need different gameplay systems, but they share the same ECS core, the same content pipeline, the same audio engine, and the same save system. Softfire layers genre-specific systems on top of a shared runtime rather than shipping a different engine per genre. This means porting skills and tooling from one project to another carries real value: the engine you learn to drive for an RPG is the same engine you use for a survival game.

The platform layer exists for the same reason. Most online game infrastructure problems — identity, relay, leaderboards, social — are solved problems. Softfire solves them once and exposes them as an API surface your game calls, so you can focus on what makes your game distinct.

The company

Softfire is the company and the engine and the platform — all the same name, no disambiguation needed.

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