Docs
Everything VANTA does, and what is honestly not built yet.
What is VANTA
A floating night market above the clouds, played in your browser with other people. There is no sun up here and no streetlight either — the whole fair is lit by lanterns somebody paid for and hung.
Light isn't scenery. It's stock: it burns down, it costs oil, and it's the only reason anyone can find your stall. Nobody owns a pitch here — you own however far your light reaches.
Controls
Keyboard
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
| W A S D / arrows | Walk |
| Shift | Run |
| E | Hang a lantern where you stand — costs 34 oil |
| R | Refuel the nearest lantern in reach — costs 20 oil |
| Drag | Turn the camera. Drag right, look right. |
Touch
The left thumb stick walks; push it all the way out to run. The two buttons on the right hang and refuel. Camera turns by dragging anywhere on the right half of the screen — the left half belongs to the stick.
Your first night
- You arrive at the plaza with 100 oil and nothing else.
- Walk down any of the four lanes. Stalls line both sides; the brazier in the middle is the brightest thing on the deck, so you can always find your way back.
- Press E somewhere dark. That's your lantern, and that's your ground.
- Come back before it burns out, or the dark takes it.
Lanterns
A full lantern lasts 12 minutes and lights about 9 metres of walkway. Brightness is not linear against fuel — a lantern at 20% doesn't look 20% bright, it looks nearly dead. That's on purpose: you should be able to read "that one's going out" from across the lane without any UI.
They belong to the fair, not to you
Once it's up, a lantern lights whoever walks under it. Anyone can refuel anyone's lantern. Topping up a stranger's costs you oil and keeps their stretch of walkway alive — including the stretch you have to cross to get home.
They survive restarts
Lanterns are stored server-side. A row you lit last night is still glowing when you come back — otherwise the pitch you claimed was never really yours.
Oil & cost
| Thing | Value |
|---|---|
| Oil you carry | 100 |
| Hang a lantern | 34 oil |
| Refuel a lantern | 20 oil |
| Full burn time | 12 minutes |
| Lit radius | 9 m |
These numbers are read from the same config the game runs on, so this page cannot drift out of date.
Multiplayer
Everyone is in one persistent fair. You see other traders walking, their lanterns, and toasts when someone lights new ground. Positions sync about 12 times a second and are interpolated, so people walk instead of teleporting.
If the relay drops, the game keeps running and reconnects on its own — you just stop seeing other people until it's back.
Token
The ticker is $VANTA. The contract address is not out yet, and there is no date.
When it exists, it will appear on the front page of this site and on @vantaworldxyz. Those two places first — not in a DM, not in a reply, not in a group.
Does the game need it?
No. VANTA is free and playable with no wallet, and everything described on this page works without one.
Stack
| Layer | What |
|---|---|
| Client | Vite · React · React Three Fiber (three.js) |
| Server | Colyseus relay + HTTP API, one Node process |
| Storage | node:sqlite, built into Node 22 |
| Host | Our own VPS, Ubuntu 24.04, behind nginx |
| Characters | Player model generated with Meshy; crowd and props are CC0 from Kenney |
No Supabase, no Railway, no serverless bill — and no API key sitting in your browser for anyone to read.
The fair is data, not a model
The deck, the 60 stalls, the lantern strings and the walking routes are all arrays of numbers. Change a number and the market changes on reload. There is no map file to re-export.
Performance
The whole download is about 2.8 MB. Models are Draco-compressed with their textures shared rather than embedded, and the decoder is served from our own host, not a CDN.
Phones get a smaller budget automatically: fewer people in the crowd, fewer fireworks, lower pixel ratio. And the camera widens on portrait screens — three.js field of view is vertical, so a tall screen would otherwise show a tunnel.
burning lanterns cost 0 bytes/second brightness = fuel0 − burnRate × (now − t0)
Nothing is sent while a lantern burns. Only hanging, refuelling and dying travel over the wire.
FAQ
Is it free?
Yes. No download, no account, no wallet.
Can I lose my lanterns?
They burn out if nobody feeds them, and a dark lantern is scrapped after a while. That's the only way to lose ground.
Is there PvP?
No. No combat, no health bar. The only pressure is a burn rate that never stops.
Is there a token?
The ticker is $VANTA. The contract address is not out yet and there is no date — see Token. The game does not need it.
Someone DM'd me a $VANTA contract address.
It isn't ours. The address will be on the front page of this site first.
Does it work on phones?
Yes — touch controls, and the scene is tuned down automatically.