What is Phaser 4?
An orientation to Phaser 4 — what it is, what it isn't, and how it differs from Phaser 3.
Phaser 4 is a 2D game framework for the web. It renders to WebGL (with a Canvas fallback), runs in every modern browser, and ships as a TypeScript-first library.
What you get
- A scene-based architecture for organizing game state and rendering.
- A retained-mode display list of game objects (sprites, text, shapes, containers).
- An asset loader with a typed cache.
- Pluggable physics (Arcade for fast AABB, Matter for full rigid-body).
- Input across keyboard, pointer (mouse + touch), and gamepad.
- A tilemap system, particle system, animation manager, audio pipeline, and a tween engine for property interpolation.
What Phaser 4 is not
- It is not a 3D engine. Use Three.js, Babylon, or PlayCanvas for that.
- It is not a generic application framework. Use it for games and game-like interactives.
- It is not an editor. World/level data is authored elsewhere (e.g. Tiled) and loaded at runtime.
Coming from Phaser 3?
Phaser 4 keeps the broad shape of Phaser 3’s API but rebuilds the internals around modern TypeScript, stricter types, and a smaller renderer. See Migrating from Phaser 3 for the upgrade path.