The Article Tells the Story of:
- Snapchat just dropped powerful new Lens Studio tools—AR creators are about to level up.
- Turn-based gameplay, animated Bitmoji, and leaderboard boosts? It’s all real.
- New Bitmoji games let users challenge friends like never before.
- There’s even a cash prize on the line—but only for those who dare to build.
The future of social gaming is augmented, personalized, and built for rapid sharing. Snapchat has just accelerated that future by giving AR developers the essential tools to make Bitmoji games faster, more social, and more profitable than ever before. This is not a minor patch; it’s a strategic move to establish the platform’s Bitmoji gaming ecosystem. By adding technical features like turn-based logic and powerful customization, Snap is directly challenging creators to build the next generation of viral, competitive AR experiences.
Snapchat’s Lens Studio 5.10 update gives AR creators new tools to build Bitmoji-based games faster, featuring turn-based play, customization, and monetization through the Bitmojiverse Challenge.
Snapchat Rolls Out New Lens Studio Tools for Bitmoji Game Development
Snap has released powerful updates in Lens Studio 5.10, introducing core features, a dedicated Bitmoji Suite, and fresh game assets. rapidly prototype and publish interactive, friend-based Bitmoji games using Snap’s built-in templates, tools, and animation options.
Lens Studio 5.10 is part of Snap’s ongoing investment in AR game development, giving creators more visual, performance, and monetization capabilities. This marks Snap’s latest, most significant move to expand the Bitmoji gaming experience and definitively support the rapidly growing AR development community.
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New Lens Studio 5.10 Features for Game Builders
Snap has upgraded Lens Studio 5.10 with new tools aimed at improving how developers create Bitmoji-based games. These features help streamline the building process and offer more ways to enhance gameplay.
- Turn-Based System: This is the most crucial update for viral growth. Developers can now build asynchronous, competitive games where users take turns, enabling real-time or delayed challenges with friends. This system is the backbone of social competition and replayability.
- Customizable Character Controller: The new controller supports multiple game perspectives—third-person, first-person, side-scroller, and top-down—using one unified system. This provides maximum flexibility for genre creation.
- Updated Leaderboards: Snap improved the leaderboard system, which now includes templates and mixes friend and global scores with metrics like “friends who have played”. This keeps performance visible and personal, driving the essential competitive loop.
These systems are designed to reduce development time and help new AR developers launch shareable Bitmoji-based games within days rather than weeks.
Bitmoji Suite Adds Customization and Animation Features
The new Bitmoji Suite is the key to deep player engagement. It directly supports the fact that personality drives sharing by making Bitmoji characters dynamic and highly customizable.
Key features of the Bitmoji Suite include:
- Custom Outfit Design: Developers can design unique outfits for Bitmoji characters, allowing deeper player personalization.
- Stylized Props: Snap offers a library of game props that perfectly match different game themes, reducing the need for external asset creation.
- Bitmoji Animation Tools: Using Snap’s animation library, developers can animate Bitmoji characters and props in different ways, making gameplay more fluid and expressive.
Together,these upgrades let developers fully personalize avatars, integrate brand aesthetics, and make every Bitmoji experience feel original.
New Bitmoji Game Lenses and Friend Challenges
Snap has also launched a collection of new Bitmoji Game Lenses that players can enjoy alone or with friends. These Lenses showcase how the new features can be used to build fun and engaging games. Examples include:
- Bitmoji Bistro
- Bitmoji Buckets
- Beatmoji Blast
These games allow users to challenge friends and compete for top scores. This is the first time Snap has released official Bitmoji Game Lenses built specifically for friend-based challenges. Users can play solo or take turns with others, sharing scores and creating replay value.
These games allow users to challenge friends and compete for top scores, showcasing the new turn-based competitive loop. Each Lens showcases how developers can apply the new turn-based system, character controllers, and leaderboard templates in their own projects.
Snap Encourages Developers with New Incentives
To promote the new tools, Snap is running the Bitmojiverse Challenge, where eligible AR developers can win cash prizes by using the new Bitmoji Suite and Games assets. This developer focus complements Snap’s broader monetization efforts, including its new model for Sponsored Snaps in the Chat tab, marking a new era of in-app advertising.
Lens+ Subscription Expands Monetization for AR Creators: Complementing the contest structure, Snap also launched Lens+ in mid-2025, a premium subscription tier ($8.99/month) granting access to exclusive Lenses. Creators can now monetize their premium creations through this subscription layer, adding a steady revenue model on top of one-off incentives.
According to Snap, the Bitmojiverse Challenge runs through late 2025 and is open to both professional and independent AR developers. This is a clear signal that Snap is committed to rewarding its creator community and attracting more top-tier talent to Lens Studio. Snapchat’s developer ecosystem already includes more than 375,000 creators, making this challenge one of the largest global AR developer incentives in 2025.
Summary: Snap Invests in Bitmoji Games to Support AR Growth
Snap is strategically giving AR creators powerful tools and direct incentives to build Bitmoji games. The combination of Lens Studio 5.10’s technical features and the Bitmoji customization tools makes game development faster, easier, and more interactive.
Lens Fest 2025 confirmed that this strategy is working: More than 175 million people now play Lens Games each month, with overall sharing surging by over 130 percent. To support this growth, Snap introduced the Games Chat Drawer, which embeds games directly into the chat interface for instant social play, and released expanded components like the Camera Controller and a new Input System for developers.
Snap is clearly betting on Bitmoji games as the key to growing its platform and making Lens Studio the definitive tool for social game creation. Bitmoji Plaza, a web-based 3D environment currently in testing, underscores this long-term vision, extending Bitmoji from expressive stickers to persistent digital characters that connect social play, gaming, and communication across platforms. For developers, this update isn’t just a toolkit; it’s a gateway to building viral AR experiences on one of the most creative and social platforms of 2025.
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