Roblox is always looking for creative, passionate developers who want to make cool stuff for the community. That’s why we started our Accelerator and Incubator programs: to give promising game-makers the training and resources they need to make their wildest dream projects a reality. Everyone wins, especially their players. To show our love for these developers, we’re featuring some of the awesome projects that both programs have helped produce in a three-part blog series!
Here are three games you can play right now:
MeepCity Racing by alexnewtron
In MeepCity, you can be just about anyone: waiter, doctor, fisherman, interior decorator…or white-knuckled banana-hurling speed demon. According to lead designer alexnewtron, you can thank the Incubator Program for that last one.
“The Roblox Incubator program is all about helping push the limits of Roblox,” he explained. “With no successful kart racing game on Roblox and with how modular MeepCity is, I thought it was appropriate to spend my time at the Roblox office designing a fun racing game to incorporate into MeepCity.”
That racer needs some potassium riiiiight…now!
Players seem to agree. I spent the better part of an evening dodging banana peels, cacti, and turbo-charged players, and never once did I have to wait longer than a couple seconds for the lobby to fill with other eager racers. Therein lies one of the game’s subtler accomplishments: the matchmaking isn’t just fair and nuanced, it’s fast as lightning. As alexnewtron reflected: “I use my own external web-servers to match players based on their skill-level while at the same time matching friends together in the same race! I spent most of my time designing this, and it helped me learn a lot about real-world scalability with my own external servers.”
For a game built around racing, quick setups make a huge difference.
The rush of victory! Or just a regular headrush from the last sixteen turboboosts.
If you feel the need for MeepCity speed, you can hop into a kart of your very own here.
Prison Royale by Team !mpact
It happens every time the match starts: someone types “So, what are you all in for?” as our transport plane rumbles over the island. It’s a fair question to ask, since all thirty-five players are dressed in identical prison jumpsuits, but the game has no answers and I don’t stick around to swap theories. I’ve just spotted a nice two-bedroom cottage below and I’m going to parachute down and see if there are any guns or armor or all-terrain vehicles in it. You only get one life in Prison Royale, the last-man-standing shooter made possible by the incubator program, and if you want to keep that life you better find the cool stuff before everyone else does.
“These jumpsuits are really itchy and I can’t put my seat back and the pilot won’t land and I am NOT flying this airline again.”
“Each time a user plays the game they’ll get a different experience,” lead developer ScriptOn told us. “A different gun, a new vehicle, an unexplored part of the map, and all of the other variables help keep each game session unique by putting the player under a different set of circumstances every time.”
The play area shrinks into an intense arena as the match progresses, but the map starts out huge and it’s only going to get bigger. ScriptOn confirmed an upcoming update will make the full area “three times its current size” with all new weapons, vehicles, and destructible terrain. He went on to say, “My goal for Prison Royale is to have a giant open-world style map where I can have 100 excited players all fighting for the #1 spot.”
You can see I’ve scavenged a pretty decent weapon. What neither of us can currently see is the guy who’ll take it off of me in about five seconds.
100-player matches? Sounds like a heck of a battle—but if the crowded lobbies I saw were any indication, he’ll have no trouble finding the players. If you want to beat my third-place score, you can play Prison Royale’s alpha for free right now.
Archmage by Negative Games
To every player on the server except one, accelerator game Archmage is a simple obstacle course that gives you as many attempts as you need to make it across a field of floating platforms. It’d be pretty easy… if it weren’t for that last player. You know: the Archmage.
For the Archmage, the game is a knee-slappingly hilarious tower defense where the other players are the targets. You lob spells left and right to close off routes, scatter groups, and pick off cocky loners. Each kind of spell has a cooldown, but that’s not a problem: every power is fun and they’ll send players scrambling for cover in a pinch.
Of course you get a tower as the Archmage! What, are you supposed to hurl eldritch fire from a two-bedroom condo?
“Our goal is to provide an intuitive and stylized running/action game that works fluidly on every platform,” said Imaginaerum, who, along with Kegstrude and Injanity, heads up the development team Negative Games. “We’re hoping that players find themselves in all kinds of fun and intense situations trying to reach the end of each level.”
When it was my turn to hit the course, I found the operative word was “trying.” But even when I wasn’t the one throwing fireballs, I have to say I had a blast. You can try the alpha for Archmage here.
Excited to learn more about more cutting-edge accelerator and incubator projects? Stay tuned for more features on up-and-coming developers!