We founded Namazu Studios in 2008, driven by the belief that making games would be an exhilarating creative pursuit. Like many independent developers, we quickly learned that game development is anything but easy.
Over the past seventeen years, we have navigated the industry’s evolving landscape, witnessed incredible innovations, and learned invaluable lessons. Through it all, one thing has remained constant—the indie game community is the heart and soul of this industry. It is the unyielding passion, creativity, and resilience of developers that continue to push gaming forward.
That’s why we created Elements.
As we built our own games, we encountered firsthand the challenges of bringing a vision to life. We saw our contemporaries struggle, promising projects fall apart, and games fail—not due to a lack of creativity, but because of technological roadblocks. The roadblocks came from inaccessible tools in rigid and closed systems. The very infrastructure meant to support creators often became a barrier instead.
That’s why we created Elements.
And yet, one of the biggest issues we identified early on was the industry’s reluctance to embrace open-source solutions. We understood the hesitation—after all, developers have often faced the frustration of seeing their work used without acknowledgment.
Despite this, open-source technology has revolutionized countless industries, and game development is finally catching up. Commercialization shouldn’t be the roadblock. For too long the industry’s business model has been based on vendor lock-in, convoluted pricing schemes, and restrictive tooling.
We believe in an open-source future—one where developers are empowered, not constrained. A future where creativity flourishes, unhindered by proprietary roadblocks. A future where building connected games is as seamless and accessible as it should be.
That’s why we created Elements. And that’s why we’re giving it away.
Elements 3.0 is the culmination of our experience and hard work. It is a truly open and extensible ecosystem designed to empower developers to build connected games with ease. In doing this, we’re not just releasing software; we’re building a movement.
We’re enabling a community of innovators, dreamers, and builders who refuse to accept the status quo. A generation of developers who will shape the next era of gaming.
We’ve spent over a decade refining this technology. Now, it’s yours. Free. Open. Yours to use, to improve, to build the future with.