Web

Releasing on the web is the fastest way to get your game in front of players: it runs instantly in any modern browser, on desktop and mobile alike. Here’s how to prepare, build and publish it.

1. Fill in your metadata

Open index.html. Near the top is a block of <meta> tags that set your game’s title, description, social-sharing preview and icons. Filling them in isn’t required for the game to run, but it makes a big difference to how your game looks in search results and when shared. At minimum, set:

<title>Your Game Title</title>
<meta name="description" content="A short, catchy description of your game.">
<meta name="author" content="Your Name">

<!-- Social sharing (Open Graph / Twitter) -->
<meta property="og:title" content="Your Game Title">
<meta property="og:description" content="A short, catchy description.">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://yourdomain.com/preview.png">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://yourdomain.com">

<meta name="theme-color" content="#5bcaff">

2. Add your icons

The template ships placeholder icons in assets/icons/ and a favicon.ico at the project root. Replace them with your own — keep the same file names and sizes — so your game looks right in browser tabs, on home screens and when installed. A generator like RealFaviconGenerator can produce every size at once.

3. Optimize your assets

Large images and audio are the main thing that slows a game down. Compress your images (tools like Squoosh work well) and keep audio at a reasonable bitrate. Combined with Monogatari’s asset preloading, this keeps load times short even on slow connections.

4. Build

Produce a clean, production copy of your game:

bun run build:web

This writes everything players need into the build/web/ folder — your assets, the engine, your scripts and styles, the service worker and the manifest. That folder is your game.

5. Publish

Upload the contents of build/web/ wherever you want to host it:

  • itch.io — the go-to home for visual novels. Zip the contents of build/web/, upload it as an HTML5 project, and tick “This file will be played in the browser” (itch uses index.html as the entry point).
  • Static hosts — Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare Pages and GitHub Pages all serve a folder of files for free over HTTPS.
  • Your own server — any web server works; the template includes an .htaccess for Apache.

TIP

Serve your game over HTTPS (every host above does). It’s required for the service worker that powers offline play and asset caching.

Bonus: an installable app

Because the build includes a manifest.json and a service worker, your web release is already a Progressive Web App — players can install it to their home screen and play it offline, just like a native app. See Mobile to make the most of it.