Game characters have come a long way in the last few years, but Genies — the company best known for its ultra-stylized digital avatars — is kicking that evolution into high gear. After announcing a partnership with Unity this summer, the company has begun rolling out its first set of tools to developers: the Genies Avatar SDK, now available on the Unity Asset Store.
The process is exceptionally easy: Drop this package into your project, and suddenly your game can support high-fidelity, fully customizable player avatars that persist across any game built using the Unity dev engine and that plugs into the same system. The avatars are then available across Unity-based games. The Genies Avatar SDK gives players something games have tried (and often failed) to nail for years — a digital identity that’s entirely theirs, not one feels like a generic character creator pulled from a dropdown menu.
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Change On the Fly
The Genies editor lets players tweak body features, facial details, outfits, hairstyles, and accessories with a surprising amount of nuance. There’s a built-in “Closet” with starter clothing, and new outfits will roll out regularly, with developers able to also toss their own designs into the mix. Thanks to the company’s auto-rigging pipeline, custom wearables snap onto any avatar without breaking animations, clipping through bodies, or tanking visual fidelity.
Developers get a flexible avatar framework baked directly into the SDK. It comes with a ready-to-use character controller and can plug into existing animation systems if you already have one. NPCs can be created through the same editor — meaning every character in a world, not just players, can share the same expressive stylization. More importantly, everything persists. If a player unlocks or buys a wearable in one experience, it lives in their inventory everywhere the Genies system is supported.
Bringing It All Together
The Genies SDK also includes a streamlined login flow. Instead of making players juggle passwords or account portals, Genies uses a one-time email code system that carries a user’s avatar and items from game to game. For any developer building a social space, UGC world, or multiplayer hub, that’s the holy grail.
But Genies is already teasing what comes next — and this is where things get really interesting. The company is developing an AIGC SDK that can generate game-ready 3D assets in minutes, a Smart Avatar SDK that turns NPCs into AI-driven characters capable of learning and adapting to players, and a Genies Party SDK that bundles all of this into a platform for IP-driven experiences. Their stated goal is to turn some of the most tedious parts of development — asset creation, rigging, optimization — into fast, automated workflows.
Whether this becomes the next big shift in game development or just a very fancy avatar creator remains to be seen. But if you’re curious, the Avatar SDK is already live on the Unity Asset Store — and Genies says it’s only the first step in a much cooler, more ambitious plan.
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