A palette-first WebGPU retro engine for TypeScript, inspired by RetroBlit by Martin Cietwierkowski (@daafu). Draw with palette indices instead of RGBA pixels, animate with palette cycling and fades, and ship authentic VGA-era effects on modern GPUs – with an automatic Canvas 2D fallback when WebGPU is unavailable.

Read the documentation at blit386.dev.

npm create blit386@latest my-game

Works with npm, pnpm, yarn, or bun. You get a ready-to-run Vite project, a commented starter game, and local docs.

blit386/blit386 is a single monorepo holding everything below. The engine anchors it; the other packages release in lockstep with it.

• packages/blit386 – the engine library (npm).
• packages/create-blit386 and packages/kit – the npm create blit386 scaffolder and @blit386/kit.
• packages/demos – interactive examples, hosted at demos.blit386.dev.
• packages/website – source for blit386.dev.
• awesome-blit386 – a curated list of BLIT386 resources and community games.

• True indexed rendering – primitives and sprites write palette indices, not RGBA.
• Palette effects built-in – cycling, fade, flash, and swap run per frame, no per-sprite rewrites.
• Retro palette presets – VGA, CGA, C64, Game Boy, PICO-8, and NES.
• Post-process effects – a two-tier chain with bundled CRT presets.
• Full input – pointer, keyboard, and gamepad, plus a fixed-timestep loop and frame capture.

• Discord
• GitHub Discussions
• X
• Bluesky
• Mastodon

• Václav Vančura (@vancura)

Licensed under ISC.