There are still more BLOXikins to collect, and companions to aid you on your quest!

The horizon and scope of ROBLOX games are constantly expanding. Though our platform is shaped 99% by our user base of builders and game creators, our very own Games Team likes to step in every now and again to deliver a unique gameplay experience to all — and then release what we learn to the community so that you can create even better games. Last year’s Egg Hunt was a large undertaking that went over quite well, so we knew the next time we created a holiday-themed game we would want to make it even bigger. Thus, the basic idea behind BLOXtober’s Witching Hour was conceived.

We are currently right in the middle of the release cycle of this game, and we thought we’d take stock of how the game has changed since its Early Access release 10 days ago, and look to the horizon at features and changes we’ve yet to implement.

From the very beginning the Games Team and I were cautiously optimistic about the scale of the game we wanted to create. We generated a map 100 times the size of our Egg Hunt, and had but a few weeks to build a game inside the massive world we created. Why so big? A map this size was a challenge to create, and we knew it would be a challenge for players as well; this wasn’t going to be a game that you could finish in a couple hours. It was going to take commitment! We were also introducing new features (that will soon be available to all developers) such as consumable items (in The Witching Hour, these are things like candy, which is the in-game currency, and single-use items like teleport spots). These were things never seen before in a ROBLOX game, and we knew from the start that there were rough spots we’d only encounter when the game was live.

The Witching Hour had an iterative development cycle, meaning we had a baseplate to start and slowly and methodically designed and built around it. We discovered early on that in order to make a fun and in-depth game, we were going to need some extra help from our users. We take great pride in calling on our users for rapid improvement. When we released Early Access to the Witching Hour, we wanted feedback. There were so many aspects to the game, and we wanted to know which aspects should take priority and why.

Improvements based on your feedback

The feedback we received was immensely helpful in plotting our development and release pipeline. Over the following days, The Witching Hour started to become a better and better game. At the point of this writing, we believe that the game is largely functional and much more fun than it was when we first released. Here is a list of some of the things we’ve improved based on your feedback:

• Faster join times
• Introduction screen with directions
• Guidance (i.e., help players understand what to do and where to do it)
• Moved Quest missions into houses that immediately surround the location where you received the Quest
• Rebalanced difficulty based on metrics we gathered (that means certain quest items are now dropped much more frequently)
• Stopped every single game-breaking bug
• Completed nine out of 13 zones of the map. Remaining zones are in development (which means there are more quests to come!)
• 75% of hats are available and can be achieved/unlocked by playing the game
• New types of enemies, including zombies, vampires, purple spiders, ghosts and more

The content to come

All that being said, there are still a few days until Halloween, and more work to be done! Here are some features we will be enabling soon in order to bring The Witching Hour to a satisfying conclusion.

• Still more companions, including a flying dragon
• Faster and easier ways to move around the map (including teleporters that will take you to and from each admin’s house, once you find them)
• Social gameplay: you’ll move around faster and get more loot if you’re playing with friends.
• More quests — which means more BLOXikins (who have proved to be very popular) and badges
• Prize tiers based on how many BLOXikins you’ve collected
• Integration of the top three BLOXtober Halloween costumes