Rooms, a 3D design app and ‘cozy game,’ gets a major update as users jump to 250K

techcrunch.com:

Five months ago, Rooms, a 3D design platform made by ex-Google employees, launched its beta version on the App Store. Today, the free iOS app is getting a big update that will bring a wave of new discovery-first features, including an activity feed, an explore page, the ability to browse by category, and more.

Rooms is an interior decorating app that falls under the cozy game category. Players can build and code intricate 3D rooms and mini-games using a library of over 7,500 digital items. Users can customize items by editing code with Lua, the programming language that’s also used in Roblox Studio.

Rooms touts a quarter of a million registered users, up from 40,000 in 2023. The user growth is a notable accomplishment for a scrappy three-person team that released its web platform less than a year ago.

“When we launched last November, it was in some ways an experiment to see if this idea we had would resonate with people,” co-founder Jason Toff told TechCrunch. “We were pleasantly surprised that people not only used it, but that they also made rooms a lot, [and] a lot better rooms than we expected.”

Toff previously worked in Google’s AR/VR division. His former colleague Bruno Oliveira is also on the founding team, as well as Nick Kruge, who has experience working at Uber, YouTube, and Smule.

Image Credits: Things Inc. (Rooms’ parent company)

At launch, the mobile app only had three TikTok-style vertical feeds to choose from: a “For You” feed, Editor’s Picks, and a Recent feed. However, as Rooms continues to grow, the founders want to give its users a way to easily discover other user-generated rooms and praise creators for their designs.

With today’s launch of “Rooms 2.0,” the company added a Trending feed to the home screen, helping boost popular creators and their most-liked contributions. Plus, users can scroll through over a dozen new categories, including “Games,” “Art,” “Fantasy,” “Nature,” and “Weird.” There’s also “Tribute,” a selection of rooms inspired by popular