Introduction
After the Manyland virtual world went offline in 2024, I went looking for a replacement. Manyland was a virtual world without any game mechanic where the primary objectives were instead collaborative art, collaborative world building, and simply socialization. I discovered there were many other similar virtual worlds still online. Additionally, I realized that prior attempts to index these were incomplete and outdated.
And so, as a favor to those who love virtual worlds, but prefer “general purpose” ones, ie those without a game mechanic, I’ve compiled a list of them below.
This list omits worlds build for VR headsets and where the non-VR desktop experience, if any, is a frustrating afterthought. I really don’t think more than a tiny fraction of the US population is going to purchase VR goggles anytime soon, because we still haven’t fixed the headache issue with them for over 30 years. But nearly everyone has a computer with an operating system that can run the programs in the list below.
Inclusion in the list below is not necessarily any kind of endorsement, and the list is simply meant to be exhaustive rather than a list of favorites. Here is the list:
1. Tilemap Town
Users of Tilemap Town navigate a grid of user created and user placed 16x16 pixel tiles, each of which represents an object, floor, or wall tile. The tiles are loaded from tilesets which are created and uploaded by users. A tileset is an image grid where each cell is its own image (a sprite). Tilesets were used in early video games because they provided a way to keep all sprites (individual graphics) for a current area in fast random access memory (RAM), eliminating the CPU expensive cost of retrieving each individual graphic as needed from slower storage.
The historical term for the final grid the player sees is a tilemap, hence the game title. It is a nod to the early technology the game uses for displaying graphics.
According to the world’s creator, NovaSquirrel, Tilemap Town was based off an old virtual world named ‘Icon Ultima’Tilemap Town is one of the less popular virtual worlds in this list, but is very new and growing.
Website: tilemap.town
2. Pictorbit
After Manyland shut down during February of 2024, a woman with the pseudonym Rose developed a Manyland clone throughout 2024-2025 privately under the name Thingistan, and then made the clone public during 2026 as Pictorbit.
Pictorbit has reasonably chill players and staff has put significant effort into reviving community at spawn. It has some cons however. Users cannot run their own servers and there are world state issues from aggressive multi-server caching (objects occasionally not unloading properly).
Website: pictorbit.com
3. Saltfree
Saltfree is the only other Manyland clone currently online.
Saltfree has its own benefits. Unlike Pictorbit, users can easily download their own art and their server runs on a single home computer out of the administrator’s house (last time I checked). This keeps the game’s state stable, and doesn’t have the caching issue Pictorbit does. Like Pictorbit, users are unable to run their own servers.
Website: Saltfree.Antisa.lt
4. Spindizzy
Spindizzy is a social MUCK. It’s worth defining that first. Being a fan of both IRC and BBSs, or old bulletin board software only available via text clients via telnet or SSH, hearing about MUDs/MUCKs/and MUSHs was highly intriguing to me. They are like BBSs in that they retain some static signs of life even after people log off. And like IRC, they are partially built around casual, ephemeral text chat. By marrying both of these concepts, we get a virtual world system that is entirely text based, and you navigate the worlds much like early text adventure games. There really are no graphics. Typing ‘Look’ prints text of your surroundings. Then you interact with your surroundings via text. Each MUD world is a large series of rooms, and you can also find the exits of said rooms through aforementioned ’look’ command. You travel to adjacent rooms by entering their name.
Spindizzy is a unique MUCK in that it is primarily social oriented and not oriented toward any default game mechanic.
Telnet address: muck.spindizzy.org:7073 (Needs a separate Telnet program, with url and port entered manually)
5. Second Life
Second Life has been on my radar for decades but I never became a player for more than a few days. For one, primitive 3D, user-drawn graphics are very high poly count often, for some reason. So you need a lot of GPU power to render everyone’s creations at once in a single space. That is a major limiting factor. That and Second Life fails to effectively communicate that the game is mostly optimized for NVIDIA GPUs. You can use AMD GPUs but it’s not an efficient experience. For years this interfaced Second Life clients poorly with open source operating systems, as they’ve had poor NVIDIA support only until recently.
Additionally, Second Life has always been the home of the ‘geekier’ side of nerds: not just furries, but a wide assortment of various other human-hybrid… things. After arriving and seeing a million different species of humans, it’s unclear exactly how each one prefers to be interacted with. Additionally, primitive 3D drawings feel less inviting than primitive 2D ones. A primitive 2D drawing is ‘charming’ like your prototypical stick figure. But a world built around primitive 3D drawings and as a long-term alternative for ‘real-life’? Now we are in a nightmare. Truly residing in a primitive 3D world is a creepiness that extends beyond avatars. It’s always beneath your feet, and even the buildings around you! Everything looks a little… broken, the pixels show through the poorly adjacent triangles of building wall seams. Will the roof just fall off? Jagged, sharp edges are everywhere. In the real world, you would probably just leave such a place for physical safety. I walked into Second Life a few times, had a short chat with a few residents, hung out in a few public spots and then left to never return again.
Website: SecondLife.com
6. OpenSimulator
Open Simulator (also called ‘OpenSim’) is essentially the decentralized, federated version of Second Life. It’s the Mastodon to Second Life’s Twitter. Users can teleport to each other’s servers, an impressive design architecture that feels necessary for any future virtual worlds project, to ease the financial burden of scaling, and let communities control their own terms while maintaining a broader environment.
Website: www.OpenSimulator.org (May take a while to load)
7. ActiveWorlds
Like Second Life and MUDs, ActiveWorlds is considered an internet staple, described by Virtual Worlds documentarian Ryan Schultz as a “granddaddy” of virtual worlds. https://ryanschultz.com/list-of-social-vr-virtual-worlds/ Active Worlds was popular long before my time on the web, and as such it is the only software here I’ve never used. Launched nearly 8 years before Second Life, ActiveWorlds has been online for almost 30 years as of this year. Also, like Manyland and Second Life, the assets are user generated. Unlike Second Life and Manyland, user generated objects were limited to a set of pre-defined building blocks advertised on each world. This gave each world a coherent style. Due to its relative obscurity on the modern internet, Youtuber ‘Straszfilms’ (Chris Hornyak) calls it ‘Second Life for hipsters’. As Straszfilms further explains, the difficulty of creating 3D graphics in the 90s solidified the influence of a single 3D asset creator named Circle of Fire Studios, which left a permanent aesthetic mark on ActiveWorlds. Circle of Fire Studios eventually took control of ActiveWorlds as a whole, but with a different database, involving a loss of prior worlds for the entire community. I’m unaware of ActiveWorlds’ current owner, but ActiveWorlds is also increasingly becoming paywalled. It also has a long history of monetization attempts. As of this year, building at all costs money, and features like Telegrams are being put under a paywall.
Website: www.ActiveWorlds.com
8. DeltaWorlds
As a response to the issues with ActiveWorlds, the Reddit community forum for ActiveWorlds recommends a free but also closed-source alternative called ‘DeltaWorlds’. DeltaWorlds seeks to be a clone of ActiveWorlds, but the maintainers are increasingly dissatisfied with their custom client. On April 7th of this year a moderator of DeltaWorlds announced their intention to switch to Second Life’s client, while also maintaining an independent server which imports old ActiveWorlds worlds. https://forums.deltaworlds.com/topic/4-deltaworlds-v2/
You can see my prior, detailed article on DeltaWorlds here.
Website: www.DeltaWorlds.com
9. Virtual Paradise
Virtual Paradise is a semi-clone of ActiveWorlds that began development in the early 2000s. It’s run by a single individual named Edwin Rijkee, who calls himself the “benevolent dictator for life” of the software. https://wiki.virtualparadise.org/FAQ#What_is_Virtual_Paradise? Virtual Paradise is only modeled after ActiveWorlds, with a similar user interface and building mechanics. However, the software itself is completely homemade and doesn’t share code with ActiveWorlds. It’s also notably the only one of the three with a native Linux client. Virtual Paradise itself is still under active development with at least 11 fixes and multiple new features being released throughout 2025.
Website: www.VirtualParadise.org
10. Decentraland
Decentraland is a heavily monetized virtual world, which has all the components of a general purpose virtual world, they are just deprioritized in favor of a ‘custom skin’ monetization scheme which reminds of those found in low-quality phone games. Like most of the prior virtual worlds, users can individually create the assets within the overall world, but unlike prior virtual worlds, avatar customization comes with a steep publishing fee. Clothing and accessories also serve as an elaborate hook to get you to purchase and exchange items from an NFT marketplace. This seems to be the focus of the game despite its potential use as a general purpose game. Clicking on any individual user tells you what NFTs they own before any personality traits. The game’s mechanics constantly and implicitly goad you to design and purchase clothing accessories from each other, which supposedly hold a special value because they are associated with a blockchain. The game’s individual worlds are geared toward the cryptocurrency community, but the sizeable cryptocurrency community seems to have largely declined using Decentraland in favor of speculating on its associated cryptocurrency called ‘MANA’, which, as I type has a 300 million dollar market cap. Contrast that to the in-game population, which seems low in comparison, about 500 logged people in at a time. Despite the ability to create user graphics, the game has fallen victim to one of the more annoying features of popular cryptocurrency online forums: non-stop self-advertisement, the world is essentially a world of billboards for external services or inactive in-game events. Popular cryptocurrency vlogger Cryptos R’ Us once did a popular liveplay of the game, and was shown as confused about immediately being confronted with worlds whose main purpose was just to house signs and billboards, several of which he clicked without any reaction from the game engine.
Website: Decentraland.org
11. Pixadom
Pixadom is explicitly commercial; users receive emails to purchase objects using gems, which can in turn be purchased with dollars. It also has a generally commercial feel to it, like the now defunct ‘Relm’ virtual world company.
Pixadom is highly regimented into only a few distinct areas. Additionally, they attempt to add some game mechanics, or objectives, into at least one of the areas, and in a way that is borderline predatory in its quest to keep users engaged. For example, they expect a user to spend at least 5 literal screen time hours, continuously, on observance and mini-games to retain a plant they watered in the community garden, or else it dies (LMAO). Although, being one of the few virtual worlds without an overarching objective, and with a relaxing 2D style, I admire what Pixadom is attempting aesthetically. While a bit too busy with animations, it has a certain aesthetic charm in my opinion.
Website: www.Pixadom.com
12. There.com
While Second Life was launching and there was a roster of virtual worlds competing for market share, there were two main games mentioned in media at this time: There.com and Second Life. There.com took the approach of pre-built assets and little creativity, whereas Second Life let the users create their own worlds. While both there.com and Second Life offered an alternative to the real-world, few users wanted to remain on platforms like there.com which was constantly built around monetization schemes. At the beginning, even basic item collection in there.com involved some exchange of real world money for their virtual currency to buy the asset. There.com advertised an early version of ‘digital ownership’ through real-world payment before NFTs did. They marketed that in-game ownership of goods purchased with real money was just as “real” as meatspace items purchased with money. As the world experience was largely determined by the developers, users ultimately preferred Second Life and similar games which allowed for more user freedom in item creation, until there.com was basically a ghost town. There.com has exchanged ownership multiple times but is still running.
Website: There.com
13. Home Legacy
Home Legacy, previously Atom Republic, is partially centered around a literal theme park. Like There.com the developers largely determine the user experience and it is not geared toward user asset creation. The recent reviews on Steam are highly negative, panning the game’s obsession with monetization. Other “theme park” feeling virtual worlds include Habbo Hotel and Avakin Life.
Website: Steam link
14. WorkAdventure
Work is what people do most of the day, so I consider it ‘general purpose’. WorkAdventure is probably the easiest-to-use virtual work world I’ve found, but also not particularly enjoyable. Not because of the work facilitation, but because entering someone’s private space triggers their webcam, meaning just walking near someone feels like harassment. They get a loud ‘DING’ and all of a sudden their meatspace body is broadcast without warning. A bit unthoughtful to those of us who need a bit of warning, primping, and posture before being broadcast. The idea of ensuring shared project spaces in a metaverse is a fabulous idea though. And I would personally prefer these project spaces involve non-ephemeral chats tied to each plot of land, rather than ephemeral webcam chats that launch on mutual avatar proximity. That way, you can move around while describing your project, utilize the actual virtual world to describe your project, or maybe just pace while working. Pacing helps a lot with thinking! It’s possible WorkAdventure allows configuration to enable other modes of work communication, but they aren’t immediately obvious. I left the main WorkAdventure server rather quickly after feeling a bit embarrassed, they start you out in their main, virtual corporate office, which is immediately stressful to someone who likes to ease into annoying any over-controlling admins over a period of 1-2 weeks.
Website: workadventu.re
15. Occupy White Walls
As I regard creativity and user freedom the core components of a general purpose virtual world, I stretch the term ‘general purpose’ somewhat to talk about them here. Whether they truly count as general purpose is of course up to you, and yeah they probably don’t, but I love the idea. The Occupy White Walls virtual world is downloadable on Steam and is solely dedicated to art gallery creation as you navigate its 3D virtual world as an avatar. A very highly rated game, the game is unfortunately described as inactive and seemingly developer-abandoned by recent Steam reviews. Nonetheless, recent users have still had a positive experience, so I felt it was worth mentioning.
Website: Steam link