Multiplayer · Lens Studio beta

Three games,
one framework.

As a developer I had early beta access to the Lens Studio multiplayer framework. During that beta I built three Connected Lens games, each one on top of the last.

See the games
The beta

Real-time multiplayer inside Snapchat, before the framework was public.

Snake proved the stack, Hex turned it into an architecture, Mob Siege applied it at scale. All three are TypeScript Connected Lenses, with host-simulated bots so a session always has five players.

How it grew

Every game inherited the last one's hard-won lessons

These are not three unrelated demos. Hex is a direct fork of Snake, and the two projects still share a scene id. Mob Siege's own source refers back to what it calls "the proven Hex split". The gameplay changed completely each time; the architecture compounded.

01
Snake
Arcade · Slither.io

Proved the stack: Connected Lens session, networked player prefab, host-simulated bots, and the founding rule that visuals are derived locally rather than synced.

02
Hex
Territory capture · Paper.io

Advanced the architecture: chunked-delta sync with keepalive replace semantics, procedural mesh rendering at scale, a generated audio pipeline, and a measured performance pass.

03
Mob Siege
Strategy · .io battler

Applied the framework at scale: armies, capturable towers, a five-mode bot AI with adaptive population, and full-state keepalive sync.