8th Wall Studio continues to evolve with each release, bringing fresh features to empower creators. With our latest update, we’re excited to introduce Prefabs, enabling you to create reusable, customizable game templates that streamline and scale your development.

What are Prefabs?

Let’s start with the basics: what’s a Prefab? In game development, Prefabs are like your favorite go-to recipe—you mix key ingredients (components, visuals, behaviors) into a reusable template you can drop into any level or scenario. Think of them as ready-made building blocks that save you from recreating the wheel every time you need an enemy, tree, or power-up. They don’t just speed up production, they also improve performance, since the engine can optimize these shared instances under the hood. Whether you're prototyping fast or polishing your final build, Prefabs are essential for staying organized, and efficient.

Drag, drop, repeat: making Prefabs in Studio is easy

Now let’s talk about Studio’s Prefab System. In Studio, you can now set up Prefabs with one click using the “Make Prefab” option on an object or group, or by dragging objects into the Prefab tab of the asset browser. Prefabs can have hierarchies, so your flying robot Prefab could come with pre-attached laser beams, animations, and sound effects—ready to go with a single call.

Within the Prefabs tab, you can easily edit your Prefab and its components, update its hierarchy, create duplicates or variations–the same way as you would work with objects in the Hierarchy. If you want to visually inspect and edit your Prefab’s details in an isolated view, just double click it to open the Prefab Editor which lets you make design edits directly to the source. Updates made to the source will automatically be previewable across all instances of the Prefab in the scene.

Ready to use your new Prefab? Simply drag and drop the Prefab into your scene viewport or scene hierarchy to create a Prefab Instance. You can also easily make instance-specific changes or variations. Say you're building an experience with a cast of characters. You might have a base "Character" Prefab with shared behavior—like walking, speaking, or following gaze—you can then instance that Prefab to create specific roles: a guide, a shopkeeper, or an alien invader. You can change and override certain components on the instance, while inheriting the rest. Component overrides will remain overwritten, letting you easily separate what should be instance change versus a prefab source change.

Direct Prefabs at runtime with Studio’s expanded game engine

Studio’s lightweight, high-performance game engine is now expanded to enable directing Prefabs at runtime with minimal code. You can programmatically generate new instances in real time based on existing Prefabs—perfect for spawning enemies, NPCs, or interactive elements in your scene. 

Studio’s engine also gives you flexibility to make Prefab instance changes and edits at runtime. In a Studio project, this means you can spawn variations of characters on the fly, each with their own look and feel but shared foundational logic—crucial for dynamic experiences where content changes frequently. All while keeping your code clean, modular, and super easy to manage.

Common use cases for Prefabs

Prefabs can be used almost everywhere! You’ll find them in enemy spawning systems, where waves of foes are generated from Prefab templates with randomized attributes. They’re used in UI systems, where reusable menus can be instantiated based on layout Prefabs. And don’t forget environment design—trees, crates, and decorative elements can all be placed using Prefabs to keep worlds consistent and easy to build. With Studio’s new Prefab system, all of this becomes more powerful, modular, and scalable than ever.

Ready to get started building with Prefabs? Learn more about developing with Prefabs in Studio’s docs. New to 8th Wall? Sign up for your free 8th Wall account to start building today!