shapez.io

Last reviewed Sep 13, 2026 · 740 words

Self-hosting shapez.io is a static-file job. You build the game once, drop the output behind any web server, and that is the whole deployment: no backend process, no database, no port beyond the one your web server already has open. The 256 MB in the listing is what the build step wants, not what serving it costs, and serving it costs nothing you would notice. The actual work is the build, and the actual trap is that your save games never touch the server at all.

The build is the only hard part

The repository is a JavaScript project with a gulp-driven build in the gulp/ directory. Getting it to compile needs more than a typical Node project: Node and Yarn, plus ffmpeg and a Java runtime for the sound and sprite-atlas steps, at last check. Install those, run yarn inside gulp/, then invoke the production web build target. The target names have shifted between releases, so treat the README's build section as authoritative rather than a blog post from 2021. What comes out is a build/ directory of HTML, JavaScript and assets.

Serving that is one line of config for any static server. With Caddy:

shapez.home.example.com {
    root * /srv/shapez/build
    file_server
}

Nginx, a Python http.server on a LAN, or a folder on an existing web host all work equally well. There is nothing to restart, log-rotate or back up on the server side.

Saves live in your browser, not on your server

This is the part that catches people. shapez.io stores save games in browser storage on the machine that plays it. Clear site data, switch browsers, or open the game on a different laptop, and the 40-hour factory is gone or absent. The game has an export and import function for save files in its menu; use it, and keep the exported files somewhere that gets backed up. Your server holds zero state, which makes it trivially disposable and also means it cannot rescue anyone.

Mod support, which the project lists as a feature, is a standalone feature in practice: mods are JavaScript files loaded from a folder on disk by the desktop build, and a browser tab has no way to read that folder. If mods are the draw, run the desktop version locally instead of hosting anything.

What the GPL source covers and what Steam gates

The repository is the whole game under GPL-3.0. The free browser version on shapez.io is a demo that stops after a set number of levels and points you to the paid standalone on Steam. Those limits are build configuration, not missing code; a build from source with the standalone flags set gives you the full campaign. Whether that sits right with you is an ethics question rather than a licence one: the GPL permits it, and the developer funds the project by asking people who enjoy the game to buy a copy. The commercial sequel, shapez 2, is a separate closed-source game and not part of any of this.

Who actually self-hosts a single-player browser game

Three groups, in my experience. Schools and clubs with filtered or absent internet that want a factory-logic puzzle on the LAN. People who keep an air-gapped homelab and like having a copy of things that could disappear from the web. And developers who want to fork the game, since a running build is the fastest way to see a change. Nobody self-hosts it for multiplayer, because there is none; if you want a game where your server actually matters to other players, look at Luanti, OpenTTD or the rest of the games category, where a dedicated server is the whole point.

What I'd do

If you just want to play, buy it on Steam and skip everything above; the desktop build has mods, saves on disk, and the full campaign, and it costs less than lunch. If you have a LAN-only or offline reason, build it once on a machine with the toolchain installed, copy the build/ directory to whichever static server you already run, and tell every player about the save export button before they start rather than after. Treat the server as a CDN for one game and it will never give you a reason to think about it again.