Project glossary

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You'll see several "asobi" names in docs, repos, and the Discord. Here's what each one is and when to reach for it. Read this page first if you're new — the names look interchangeable and aren't.

The open-source pieces

asobi — the public Erlang library published on Hex. Depend on it in rebar.config if you're writing your game backend directly in Erlang/OTP and want match, matchmaking, world-server, voting, economy, and the rest as composable OTP behaviours. This is the library underneath everything.

asobi_lua — the batteries-included runtime that wraps the asobi library with a Luerl VM so you can write game logic in Lua without knowing Erlang. Ships as a Docker image at ghcr.io/widgrensit/asobi_lua. Most people start here.

asobi_arena_lua — the flagship end-to-end Lua example. Read it to see a full game, not a snippet.

Client SDKs

asobi-godot, asobi-defold, asobi-unity, asobi-unreal, asobi-js, asobi-dart, flame_asobi — one per engine, all talking to asobi over WebSocket + REST. See the SDK table in the README.

The commercial layer

asobi.dev Cloud — managed hosting, opening later in 2026. Same binary you can self-host today, with opinionated ops and flat per-container pricing. Join the waitlist at asobi.dev/cloud.

If we disappear, the open-source pieces above are enough to run your game forever. See exit.md for the runbook.

Which one do I start with?

  • "I want to write Lua." → asobi_lua. Pull the Docker image, write match.lua, docker compose up.
  • "I want to write Erlang." → asobi. Add it to rebar.config, implement the asobi_match behaviour.
  • "I want both." → asobi_lua hosts your Lua code and is itself built on the asobi library. You can drop from Lua into an Erlang behaviour for a hot loop without leaving the process.
  • "I just want hosting." → self-host asobi_lua today, or join the asobi.dev/cloud waitlist.

Concepts, not projects

These are vocabulary, not repositories. You'll see them throughout the docs:

  • Match — a short-lived gameplay session. 2 to N players, finite duration, result persisted. Runs as a gen_server under a supervisor.
  • World — a long-lived persistent environment. Players come and go, state persists across disconnects. Think MMO zone, town, dungeon.
  • Zone — a spatial partition inside a world. Used for sharding large worlds into loadable chunks.
  • Session — a player's authenticated connection. Survives reconnection with a session token.
  • Tenant — a studio or account in the managed cloud. You don't see this when self-hosting.
  • Game — the product you're shipping. One game may have many match modes, worlds, and tenants.

When two words compete (e.g. match vs room, world vs realm), asobi uses the first one. The Nakama migration guide and Hathora migration guide include mapping tables from competitor vocab to asobi vocab.