No stranger to ROBLOX, Quenty has been a developer for the past several years and is known for his innovative and creative portfolio of ROBLOX creations. His latest project, which is in many ways the creative culmination of his past experience, is a game you may have seen occupying the top of the Games page in the last week: Whatever Floats Your Boat. The game has only been available for a couple of weeks and already has amassed over 375,000 gameplay sessions, and the story behind the creation of this title is unlike most others.

Build a boat, hope it floats, then get ready to fight for ownership.

Many developers on ROBLOX have grand visions for their projects — games that are so ambitious in scope and technological innovation that they’re never fully realized. For Quenty, that game is Trade Enterprise. While in the middle of developing the game, which revolves around sailing around a massive 3D world in huge ships (more on this project later in the article), Magnalite, a friend and fellow builder, showed Quenty a game she made that was also based around ships.

“I really liked it, but it was unfinished,” recalls Quenty. “I asked her two months later if she had any plans to finish it, and didn’t. So I asked her if I could.”

Quenty took the basic idea from Magnalite’s game and went to work. He rebuilt the concept from scratch, and did so in a hurry. It’s a unique blend of gameplay styles — each round starts with players building (or rebuilding) a boat in a desert expanse before rain comes and floods the level. Then, assuming what you constructed in 90 seconds out of scrap material actually floats, you defend your boat from other players (who are conveniently armed with guns and knives). The flooding and emptying of the level happens in visually impressive style, and you never know what kind of crazy antics are going to unfold once you’re piloting your boat or pirating someone else’s.

Quenty had extremely limited time — he knew that if he couldn’t finish it before summer started, it would be months before the game was released. Why? Because Quenty is spending his entire summer at an outdoor summer camp (where he also works), and access to technology of any kind is extremely limited (believe me, just getting this interview together was next to impossible).

Whatever Floats Your Boat was developed in three weeks and contains over 30,000 lines of code, which makes the game’s quick ascent to 300,000+ play sessions all the more impressive. Quenty had never undertaken such a large project in such a short period of time, meaning he had to iron out many bugs while the game was in development. He found encouragement from several ROBLOX engineers, with whom he often corresponds while conducting experiments with our physics and graphics engines. And though the game is popular, Quenty remains skeptical, and has been planning big changes when he returns from his summer in the wild.

You can team with others to work together to defend a single vessel!

“The best games don’t gain popularity, they maintain popularity,” he tells me with a laugh. “I plan on crowd-sourcing a lot of the gameplay moving forward — in this particular case, I want players to be able to build and save their boats. I’m going to be getting a lot of help from treyreynolds (a developer we featured last year), who’s developing some really cool animations.”

Quenty’s portfolio, which you can easily look at by checking out his profile page, reflects his desire to dabble in many fields of ROBLOX. From showcase places like Serene to experimental projects like Trade Enterprise, Quenty gets what it means to be fully fueled by ROBLOX. He offers this simple piece of (clickable!) advice for those looking to get into game development:

Never be bored.