We’ve been making Yarn Spinner for a decade now. Night in the Woods, DREDGE, A Short Hike, Lost in Random—hundreds of shipped games use it.
The world is different than it was ten years ago. The industry is different. The way open source projects survive is different. Here’s where Yarn Spinner is going in 2026 and beyond.
What We’re Shipping in 2026
We haven’t done a public roadmap before—client work stops us, so no dates. This is what we’re shipping sometime in 2026.
Yarn Spinner for Unity
Unity is where most of our users are. We just shipped Yarn Spinner 3.1 in December 2025 with async dialogue runner methods, option fallthrough, a reworked typewriter system, and full Text Animator integration in the paid version.
We’re keeping up with Unity releases, fixing bugs, maintaining stability. New features and samples continue to ship.
Yarn Spinner 3.1 for Unity
More Third-Party Integrations
The Text Animator integration lets you use Text Animator’s effects directly in your Yarn scripts with unified markup. One system, no juggling between tools.
We have plans for more third-party integrations. We’re looking at tools like Rewired, i2Loc, and others that people use alongside Yarn Spinner. If there’s an asset you’re already using that would benefit from Yarn Spinner support, let us know.
Text Animator integration for animated dialogue effects
Visual Novel Kit
VNKit is a complete visual novel presentation system—character portraits, expressions, backgrounds, transitions. This is the next paid add-on we’re releasing, and it’s nearly done.
We built VNKit for our own projects first. We used it to create Hine Line ‘93 for the ACMI Game Worlds exhibit in Melbourne—a full visual novel running in a museum exhibit, handling thousands of visitors. Now we’re polishing it for release.
Hine Line ‘93, built for ACMI’s Game Worlds exhibit in Melbourne, powered by VNKit
The New VS Code Extension
We’ve completely rebuilt the VS Code extension from the ground up. The new version uses ReactFlow for the graph view—proper node navigation, minimap, auto-layout, better zoom and pan. It handles projects with hundreds of nodes and thousands of lines of dialogue.
The new graph view in action
VS Code has made some weird decisions lately—you know what we’re talking about—but it remains the most viable editor platform for us. We’re shipping the updated editor extension soon, and we’re also creating better guidance on setting up your editor environment. And, we’re evaluating what it would take to develop a standalone editor if that becomes necessary.
Yarn Spinner for Unreal
Unreal has a different architecture, a different philosophy, a different community than Unity. We’re building Yarn Spinner for Unreal properly—native integration that respects how Unreal works, not just a Unity port with the serial numbers filed off.
The foundation is solid. People keep asking for it. We’re shipping it in 2026.
Story Solver
Story Solver is a tool for understanding and debugging complex quest structures. See your entire branching narrative at once, test paths, find dead ends.
Story Solver started as a client project. We showed it at GCAP 2024. People wanted it.
We’ve been turning it into a real product. User accounts, authentication, password resets, payment processing—all the web service infrastructure you need for a hosted tool. We’re gamedev people, not web service people, so it’s been a learning curve.
Story Solver works. The user system works. Now we’re focused on better import/export, better integrations, making sure newcomers can pick it up without needing a manual. Core is solid, shipping in 2026.
Yarn Spinner for Godot
We’re working with contributors like Chris to make the Godot integration solid. We want to sell it on the Godot Asset Library and Itch the same way we do with Unity—sharing the revenue with the people who make it happen.
Godot is growing fast. We want Yarn Spinner to grow with it. Right now we use C# bindings, which serves one part of the Godot community. We’re evaluating whether a full GDScript port is possible so we can serve both camps.
Testing Text Animator for Godot with Yarn Spinner for Godot
I Feel Fine
I Feel Fine is our demo game showing what Yarn Spinner can do. Shipping in 2026. Full source, full project files, all the Yarn scripts.
I Feel Fine, our narrative adventure demo game
Try Yarn Spinner
Try Yarn Spinner is the web-based playground where you can write and test scripts without installing anything. Writers draft scenes in it. Teachers use it in classes. Developers prototype dialogue on the train. We’re making it faster and smoother.
Better Ways to Buy and Access Yarn Spinner
Right now, if you want the paid version of Yarn Spinner, you can get it on Itch or the Unity Asset Store.
We’re working on getting Yarn Spinner onto more platforms—Fab, the Godot Asset Library, OpenVSX. We’re also building out a proper storefront where you can browse add-ons, manage licenses, get updates. Maybe subscriptions. Maybe bundles.
Beyond 2026
We’re building more add-ons—new dialogue presenters, more UI components, different ways to present narrative. Things that save you weeks of work if you need them.
More web-based services, too. VS Code has made some questionable decisions. Browser-based tools—no install, no setup, just open a tab and start working. Try Yarn Spinner is the beginning.
We want to keep trying weird stuff. Experimental narrative tools, things that might not work, things that push at what dialogue systems can do. When things fail, we’ll write about them—what we tried, why it didn’t work, what we learned.
How We Think About All This
Here’s the harder conversation.
The games industry is in rough shape. Open source sustainability is a known hard problem. We want to work on Yarn Spinner full time. Wanting something doesn’t pay the bills.
Here’s what we’re seeing around us:
People are taking open source tools and turning them into competitors. Sometimes by just rebranding them. Sometimes by bolting AI onto them and calling it innovation. The slop is everywhere.
More legit competitors are cropping up too. Shiny websites, high price tags, VC funding. But they don’t have a decade of quality of life improvements. They don’t have the community. They don’t have the battle-tested codebase that’s shipped in hundreds of games.
Meanwhile, we want to keep trying interesting things. Story Solver. Integration with tools that aren’t dialogue systems at all. The weird experimental stuff that makes this work fun.
Making something great takes time, and time needs money.
The Options We’ve Rejected
There are some ways people try to solve this problem. We’ve thought about all of them.
Going closed source. Some projects do this. They build up goodwill as open source, then close the code when they need money. We don’t want to do that. Yarn Spinner has been open source for a decade. That’s not changing.
Integrating AI. Everyone’s doing this. Slap an LLM in there, call it AI-powered, ride the wave. We’re not doing it. Yarn Spinner exists to support writers. Writers are already getting squeezed by AI—work scraped without permission, studios replacing them with chatbots, economic pressure of “just use AI, it’s cheaper.” We’re not building tools that contribute to that. We make tools for people who want to write, not tools that write for them.
Getting acquired. Sell to a bigger company, let them worry about the business model. We’ve seen what happens to tools when they get acquired. The original team leaves, priorities shift, the thing you loved becomes something else.
Getting rid of the free tier. Some tools have done this. Free was just a way to get users, now it’s time to charge everyone. The free version of Yarn Spinner is real. It’s complete. It’s not a trial.
What We’re Doing Instead
Because we’re not willing to do any of those things, our options for generating revenue are more limited. That’s fine. We’d rather have limited options than compromised values.
So here’s how we fund Yarn Spinner:
Selling paid add-ons. Integrations with other paid assets. Components that save you time. Things you could build yourself but might not want to. The storefront version is Yarn Spinner with extras included.
Selling access to services. Web based tools, hosted services. Things that provide ongoing value and are worth ongoing payment.
Selling our time. We take on client work to support the time we spend working on Yarn Spinner. If you need help integrating Yarn Spinner into your game, we can do that. If you need a feature built that doesn’t exist yet, reach out—we’d love to help, like we’ve done for Demonschool and countless others.
That’s it. That’s the business model.
What We Promise
Every decision we make is in service of our users and community.
The core will always be free and open source. Everything that makes Yarn Spinner work is in the open source version. The compiler, the runtime, the engine integrations. That’s not changing.
Paid stuff will always be additive. We’re not going to take features away from the free version to put them in the paid one. The paid version is extras on top, not essentials behind a paywall.
We will keep improving both. The free version gets better. The paid version gets a few extra things. Everyone benefits from us working on this.
We’ve been doing this for a decade, and we’re not stopping. Yarn Spinner has been free and open source for ten years. We’ve only ever made it better.
How You Can Help
If you want Yarn Spinner to keep existing and keep getting better, here’s how you can help.
Buy the storefront version and leave a review. If the extras are useful to you, buying them directly supports our work. Reviews help other people find us. One purchase, yours forever, no subscription. Available on Itch.io and the Unity Asset Store.
Buy the add-ons. Our add-ons like Dialogue Wheel and Speech Bubbles are available individually. If they’re useful for your project, picking them up helps support our ongoing development of Yarn Spinner.
Tell people about Yarn Spinner. Word of mouth matters. If you’ve used Yarn Spinner and it worked well for you, tell other devs. Write about it. Recommend it when people ask about dialogue tools.
Hire us to help you use Yarn Spinner. If you need help integrating Yarn Spinner into your game, we do client work. Get in touch.
Hire us to add a feature you need. If there’s something Yarn Spinner doesn’t do yet that you need, we can build it. That’s how a lot of features have happened over the years. Get in touch.
Support us directly. If you want to support ongoing development without buying anything specific, we’re on GitHub Sponsors and Patreon.
Join the Discord and help out. Answer questions, share what you’ve learned. Join the Discord.
Tell us about your Yarn Spinner games. If you’ve shipped something (or you’re working on something), let us know.
Keep making games.
What’s Next
2026 is going to be a busy year. A lot to ship, a lot to improve, a lot to figure out.
See you in the release notes.