2018 Spring Accelerator Games: Castaway & Beyond the Stars

Every year, our Accelerator internship program gives talented Roblox creators a unique opportunity to gain the skills and knowledge they need to create high quality, front page-worthy games. This year’s batch is no exception, offering up an amazing assortment of games to play.

Castaway by ‘Grandma’s Favourite’ Studio

For many people, their worst nightmare is waking up on a deserted island alone. With Castaway, you can practice your survival skills right from comfort of your own home! Castaway is an open-world survival game by Cracky4 and ForyxeV. Although it’s just a demo of what’s to come, the game is far from elementary.

I don’t think I’m in Kansas anymore…

Starting off, you begin the game standing on a sandy beach. Ocean waves lap at your feet as you look at the surroundings around you: palm trees, driftwood, stones, and the crushing vulnerability of being all alone in the emptiness. You collect some planks and rocks, which you can use to fashion an axe. From there, it’s a survival domino effect. You chop down trees with your axe, the trees provide wood, the wood gives you the materials needed to build a house, and the house provides shelter. Once you’ve established your basic necessities, you can begin making luxuries such as furniture, smelting stoves, and even a sawmill!

While the gameplay is thrilling, the user interface is equally top-notch. From the crisp and seamless GUIs to the colorful and professional vector icons, it’s evident that a ton of work has gone into making this game easy on the eyes.

I wonder if I can craft a new flat screen TV…

I was also impressed with the smooth animations, especially as I was building walls and fences. Instead of building your house with pre-sized wall modules, you can select and drag to create the perfect custom walls for your new home. The floor plan possibilities are endless!

My humble abode.

It shouldn’t be long until this game is fully completed and officially released! In the meantime, you can check out the demo here.

Beyond the Stars by Roytt

RPGs? Awesome. Space exploration? Amazing. Combined? Perfection. Beyond The Stars by Roytt ingeniously blends these two genres into a unique and addicting game full of laser extraction rays, stylish space suits, obsidian squid, and wooly pigs!

This outfit is a great example of space-chef chic.

Upon joining, the game gives you a small tutorial course to get familiar with the controls and tools. After that, you’re off to explore the universe! The starting planet is called Gate, an Earth-like atmosphere with domed architecture and friendly creatures called Boopigs. On this planet, you can mine for coal and iron and fight off four-legged robots called SECr-01s.

Fighting hostile enemies gives you XP points, which fill your XP bar and levels you up each time it gets full. When you reach high enough levels, you can unlock new solar systems to explore in a gorgeous 3D star map (which goes all the way up to Level 38, phew!). This is a perfect example of exciting replayability in a game. Instead of exploring every planet in one play, you must work your way up to visit new planets.

Level 7, that’s only… six more levels than I’m at!

The detail that the creators put into each planet is astounding. Every planet is large enough so exploring it doesn’t get old, but they’re also packed with buildings, terrain, foliage, extractable resources, and even animals native to the worlds! The environment of the different planets varies widely, which makes exploring each new world so much more fun.

If battling space robots and shaving pigs on extra-terrestrial planets sounds like a good time to you, you’ve got to zoom on over and play Beyond the Stars here.

These games are just two of many brilliant games brought to you by Roblox’s Accelerator program. These creators are pushing the boundaries of what can be accomplished in Roblox and continue to provide inspiring and well-built games of all genres.