When it comes to making and releasing fan games for the public, there are few communities as creative or as prolific as that which belongs to the Sonic the Hedgehog series.
Over the years, we've seen numerous high-quality projects that have been developed by members of the Sonic community, with a wide range of tools and frameworks being available to help potential fan creators get started and set about executing their vision.
One particularly well-known framework, for instance, is aknetk's OpenMania — an open-source resource for building Sonic fangames — which features all of the necessary ingredients to begin developing your very own Sonic-themed levels. In the past, this has been people's go-to for developing Sonic Mania-inspired fangames in the hybrid 2D/3D Hatch Game Engine, but it could soon be replaced with a slightly more user-friendly framework named Sonic Gateway, which is being developed by the OpenMania contributor Axanery.
The news was announced earlier today in a thread from Axanery, who stated that the framework has been in development for the past three years and is set to be released sometime later this year.
In the thread, Axanery said, "The framework replicates 1:1 physics, objects, and behavior from Sonic Mania; there are numerous additions to allow for smooth fangame development! I plan to release this framework within 2026. I hope that it becomes a valuable resource for Sonic fangame creation."
As they go on to state, as they can't ship the package with Sonic Mania assets for "obvious reasons," they have suggested a compromise of potentially releasing the framework with a short two-zone original Sonic game, to serve as a reference for fangame developers on how to create their own levels.
While we're on the subject, it also appears that Axanery is currently working on a remake of the 1993 Sega CD Sonic CD under the name Sonic CDX in OpenMania, which will reportedly feature new assets, level design, and more.
According to Axanery, later in the thread, the plan is to port this project across to the new codebase once the framework is released, with the fan developer claiming, "Doing so would allow us to take advantage of a wildly expanded feature set and accelerated workflow."
In other words, regardless of whether you're someone who makes Sonic fangames or simply someone who enjoys playing them, you will likely benefit from this exciting new project.