The first thing you notice when spawning into the world that is Zed Defense Tycoon is that it’s a beautiful game, featuring dynamic lighting and shadows, surface GUIs, custom character animations, dynamic effects as you construct your base, an atmospheric soundtrack, and many of our new textures. And though the open-ended gameplay can feel confusing at first, that sense of confusion quickly turns into exhilaration — especially once you realize that you’ve got nothing but an axe and an empty plot of land, and zombies are emerging from the ground. Each zombie you take out earns you some cash, which you can turn around and spend on building your base.

Your bases end up looking more like buildings the further you progress.

Zed Defense is, at its heart, a tycoon game, which requires you to farm resources, fend off threats, and build a powerful base. Once you’ve got basic defenses (sandbags, doors, fences) up, you build machines that manufacture both Goo and Bone, which then generate currency. You can turn around and spend the currency on creating a more robust and larger base, buy upgraded guns, buy turrets, or upgrade your machines to churn out currency at a faster rate. It’s an exponential jump that is really rewarding — all of the sudden you’re earning enough to add new levels to your fort, which begins to look more like a full-fledged fortress as it grows. Oh, and all the while you’re building, you’re fending off blood-thirsty zombies.

“Making the base was the hardest part of development,” says RoyStanford, the creator of Zed Defense Tycoon. “I spent a lot of time thinking about what to add, and, more importantly, how much everything would cost.”

Invade other people’s bases!

What makes Zed Defense stand out from its many competitors, though, is how it leverages almost all of the developer features we’ve added to ROBLOX Studio in the last year or so. As you play, you’ll see Surface GUIs, custom character animations, and dynamic lighting, all of which give this tycoon an identity and quality all its own. There’s an eerie soundtrack playing, which further sets the tone, and in-game purchases available via Developer Products. We were surprised to see such deft use of developer features by a builder who we hadn’t heard of in the past.

“I have been on ROBLOX for several years and feel that each project I’ve completed has made me better and better. To me, quality is much more important than quantity. I’ve found that players definitely appreciate a well polished game.”

RoyStanford is pretty content with the game in its current state — he is planning on making some minor improvements in the near future, like more types of zombies (which he plans on basing off of classes from the popular Left 4 Dead series) and a few more building tools. The game has only been available for about a week, but already it’s earned RoyStanford hundreds of thousands of ROBUX, and solidified itself as one of the Top Earning games at the moment. We asked him what he plans to do with all the cash he’s earning, and his answer was simple.

“I’m cashing out with DevEx,” he tells me with a laugh. “I’m going to save all the money I earn and use it to buy video games. That’s a win win for me.”

In the end, Zed Defense Tycoon is not only a great game, but a testament to the work our engineers have been putting into ROBLOX these past couple of years to enable better and better games. Having only been out a full week, Zed Defense Tycoon has amassed more than 400,000 visits, and continues to rocket in popularity. The 17-year-old developer has distilled his years of building experience into one of the most popular titles on our platform, setting a new bar for an old classic. Go RoyStanford. Go ROBLOX.