s&box

What is s&box?

s&box is a game platform by Facepunch Studios, the studio behind Garry's Mod and Rust. It is widely regarded as the spiritual successor to Garry's Mod: instead of a single game you get an environment in which game modes, maps and tools are created by the community and loaded directly in the game.

Technically, s&box is built on the Source 2 engine. Game content is written in C# and runs in a sandboxed environment, which allows a server to send its players not only assets but the game code itself. For players this means nothing has to be installed in advance — everything needed arrives when joining, either from the server or from the cloud.

All content lives as so-called packages on the sbox.game platform. A package can be a game mode, a map, a model or a library, and it is referenced by an ident following the pattern organisation.package — for example facepunch.sandbox for the official sandbox mode. On a server you use these idents to define which game mode and which map should run.

The official sandbox mode picks up right where Garry's Mod left off: spawn props, play with physics, build contraptions and mess around together with others. Alongside it, community game modes are constantly appearing, ranging from classic shooter and roleplay modes to party and puzzle games.

s&box was released on 28 April 2026 and is available for PC via Steam.