Phaser is a fast, free and fun open source HTML5 game framework. It uses a custom build of [Pixi.js](https://github.com/GoodBoyDigital/pixi.js/) for WebGL and Canvas rendering across desktop and mobile web browsers. Games can be compiled to iOS, Android and desktop apps via 3rd party tools like Cocoon, Cordova and Electron.
Along with the fantastic open source community Phaser is actively developed and maintained by [Photon Storm Limited](http://www.photonstorm.com). As a result of rapid support and a developer friendly API Phaser is currently one of the [most starred](https://github.com/showcases/javascript-game-engines) game frameworks on GitHub.
Thousands of developers worldwide use it. From indies and multi-national digital agencies to schools and Universities. Each creating their own incredible games. Grab the source and join in the fun!
Phaser 2.4.7 is our second release in 2016 and represents several months of fixes and optimizations. As a point release it's a safe update from a previous 2.4 build, but as always please test first before upgrading, and be sure to skim through the extensive change log. There are some great new features including Dolby Digital sound support, loads of updates to Pixi and a new Webpack bundle.
Due to on-going development of Lazer (previously known as Phaser 3) Phaser is soon to enter the LTS (long-term support) stage of its life. This is when we impose a feature freeze, locking the API down and responding only to bugs. This is a necessary step to allow us to focus on Lazer while still ensuring Phaser is given the support it deserves. Thousands of developers use Phaser and we've no intention of ignoring that. However with the release of 2.4.5 we will now be moderating issues opened on GitHub to this effect.
Finally we'd be extremely grateful if you could get involved with our [Phaser Patreon campaign](https://www.patreon.com/photonstorm). The uptake so far has been fantastic. Thank you to everyone who now supports Phaser development and shares our belief in the future of HTML5 gaming and Phasers role in that.
Please help support the future development of Phaser / Lazer through our [Patreon campaign](https://www.patreon.com/photonstorm). We've some exciting plans and there's so much we'd like to do.
[Phaser World](http://phaser.io/community/newsletter) is our free weekly newsletter published every Friday. It contains a summary of the news posted to the Phaser site that week. This includes new games, lots of tutorials, videos, talks and occasionally special offers.
If you'd like to try coding in Phaser right now, with nothing more than your web browser, then you can head over to the [Phaser Sandbox](http://phaser.io/sandbox). You'll find Quick Start templates and a user-friendly editor filled with handy code-completion features.
Want to try Phaser without downloading anything? The site [Koding](https://koding.com) offer a complete browser-based virtual machine to work in, allowing you to clone the Phaser repo and start work immediately.
We have a [Getting Started Guide](http://phaser.io/tutorials/getting-started) which covers all you need to begin developing games with Phaser. From setting up a web server, to picking an IDE and coding your first game. Please start here no matter what your game-dev experience, before diving in to the API.
The single biggest Phaser resource is the [Phaser web site](http://phaser.io/news). It has hundreds of tutorials listed and fresh ones are added every week. Keep coming back to see what's new!
Using Phaser with **TypeScript**? Check out this great series of [Game From Scratch](http://www.gamefromscratch.com/page/Adventures-in-Phaser-with-TypeScript-tutorial-series.aspx) tutorials.
Prefer **videos** to reading? Lynda.com have published a video based course: [HTML5 Game Development with Phaser](http://www.lynda.com/Phaser-tutorials/HTML5-Game-Development-Phaser/163641-2.html) (requires subscription)
With 400 pages of content you'll find detailed articles, game development "Making Of" guides and tutorials. All were written using the latest version of Phaser, so you won't be learning any out-dated tricks here.
The [Game Mechanic Explorer](http://gamemechanicexplorer.com) is a great interactive way to learn how to develop specific game mechanics in Phaser. Well worth exploring once you've got your dev environment set-up.
### Mighty Editor - Visual Game Editor
[MightyEditor](http://mightyfingers.com/) is a browser-based visual Phaser game editor. Create your maps with ease, position objects and share them in seconds. It also exports to native Phaser code. Excellent for quickly setting-up levels and scenes.
Phaser is provided ready compiled in the `build` folder of the repository. There are both plain and minified versions. The plain version is for use during development and the minified version for production.
Phaser includes a grunt based build system which allows you to strip out lots of additional features you may not require, saving hundreds of KB in the process. Don't use any Sound in your game? Then you can now exclude the entire sound system. Don't need Keyboard support? That can be stripped out too.
Should you wish to build Phaser from source you can take advantage of the provided [Grunt](http://gruntjs.com/) scripts. Ensure you have the required packages by running `npm install` first.
Run `grunt` to perform a default build to the `dist` folder.
Thousands of games have been made in Phaser. From game jam entries to titles by some of the largest entertainment brands in the world. Here is a tiny sample:
Phaser requires a web browser that supports the [canvas tag](http://caniuse.com/#feat=canvas). This includes Internet Explorer 9+, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera on desktop. iOS Safari, Android Browser and Chrome for Android are supported on mobile.
While Phaser does its best to ensure a consistent cross-platform experience, always be aware of browser and device limitations. This is especially important with regard to memory and GPU limitations on mobile, and legacy browser HTML5 compatibility.
If you need to support IE9 / Android 2.x **and** use P2 physics then you must use the polyfill in the `resources/IE9 Polyfill` folder. If you don't use P2 (or don't care about IE9!) you can skip this.
### JavaScript and TypeScript
Phaser is developed in JavaScript. We've made no assumptions about how you like to code and were careful not to impose a strict structure upon you. You won't find Phaser split into modules, requiring a build step, or making you use a class / inheritance OOP approach. That doesn't mean you can't do so, it just means we don't *force* you to. It's your choice.
If you code with [TypeScript](http://www.typescriptlang.org/) there are comprehensive definition files in the `typescript` folder. They are for TypeScript 1.4+.
The majority of Phaser development is now taking place on the Lazer (Phaser 3) project. The Phaser 2 branch will still be supported and issues fixed, but roadmap features have been migrated over.
Lazer is the next generation of the Phaser game framework. Using a completely ES6 base it is renderer agnostic, allowing for DOM, SVG, Canvas and WebGL rendering, across desktop and mobile web browsers.
You can read all about the philosophy behind Lazer [here](http://phaser.io/news/2016/01/phaser-in-2015-and-beyond) or join the Google Groups [mailing list](https://groups.google.com/d/forum/phaser3-dev) where progress reports are posted on a regular basis.
* Sound.position can no longer become negative, meaning calls to AudioContextNode.start with negative position offsets will no longer throw errors (thanks @Weedshaker#2351)
* The default state of the internal property `_boundDispatch` in Phaser.Signal is now `false`, which allows for use of boundDispatches (thanks @alvinlao#2346)
* Fixed issue with IE crashing on this.context.close in the Sound Manager (thanks @stoneman1#2349)
* Phaser.World.centerX and Phaser.World.centerY only worked if the bounds had an origin of 0, 0. They now take into account the actual origin (thanks @fillmoreb#2353)
Please note that Phaser uses a custom build of Pixi and always has done. The following changes have been made to our custom build, not to Pixi in general.
* DisplayObjectContainer.getLocalBounds destroys the worldTransforms on children until the next `stage.updateTransform()` call. This can make a number of things break including mouse input if width, height or getLocalBounds methods are called inside of an update or preUpdate method. This is now fixed in our Pixi build (thanks @st0nerhat#2357)
- Before submitting a Pull Request run your code through [JSHint](http://www.jshint.com/) using our [config](https://github.com/photonstorm/phaser/blob/master/.jshintrc).
