Roblox Game Design Explained Like You're 5 Yrs Old transcript

Roblox game design explained like you're five years old. As we all know, most of the Roblox games that make a lot of money that are very popular, they're all just like derivatives of each other. I'm sure you guys have noticed this. Like you look at Escape Tsunami for Brain Rods. You look at Kick a Lucky Block. You look at Steal an Egg. Like all of these games are like derived from each other. Okay. But what I've noticed and what I'm going to talk about in this video is how you can map out the best games in your niche.

For this example, I'm going to talk about the simulator subgenre tycoon niche cuz it's like the most popular one on Roblox. And I'm going to break down how you can basically take what works, add a meaningful twist, and print some paper like guaranteed every single time. Cuz there is a method to the madness. That's like one of my favorite things to say. There is a [ __ ] method to this madness, bro. All these games are mechanically under the hood the exact same game.

They just swap out specific aspects, which that's what we're going to dive into. So, without further ado, guys, it's good to be back. I know, you know, I delay until last week, but this week we're back with just some straight saucy saucy. Let's dive [ __ ] straight in. So, Ride a Pet. This is a very interesting game. Okay, I look at Roblox games or game design as basically just like building a house, right? You have your foundation, which is the fantasy and the unique mechanic.

These two are debatably the most important parts in terms of really differentiating yourself. That's just my personal opinion, but there's a lot of different stuff that you can do here. Okay, so how I'm going to chunk this down is we're going to look at some of these games. We're going to look at what is commonly occurring amongst all of them and then what each one did to kind of differentiate itself in the market and eat up tons of market share and just absolutely dominate.

So let's start with the fantasy. Okay, let's look at Ryet. What is the fantasy of Ryet? I mean, bro, it's literally in the title. Okay, no more description needed. Okay, what is the unique mechanic? Exploration. Okay, Ryipet, really, really interesting game. Like they took basically a similar exploration vibe from Creatures of Sinaria and they're like what if we just you know attached a simulator type progression loop to Creatures of Senaria like genius bro right so what is the core loop I mean bro the core loop in all of these okay this is not like the textbook definition of core loop I'm just using this as an example but the core loop is really just leave base get thing okay in literally all of these games You leave your base, you have a base, you leave it to go get a thing.

Okay, every single one of these games also has RNG which behaves differently in each game. But let's look at Ride a Pet for example, right? Where does the RNG happen? Happens in the spawn table. What do I mean by that? I mean the world spawns eggs, okay? And those eggs are randomly generated. Okay? And then once you bring those eggs back to your base, a roll happens postacquisition. What do I mean by postacquisition? means once the thing is actually in your base, that's when the roll happens.

Okay, now if you look at kick a lucky block, for example, okay, kick a lucky block, it's not so much a spawn table, meaning you don't go out in the world to get the thing. You just kick the block. I mean, there is like a spawn table in the back end, but what the front end shows, what the player sees is the block rolls, okay? And the RNG happens quote unquote pre-acquisition, like player facing, right? Like you kick the lucky block and then the roll happens and you got to bring the thing back to your base.

That's what I mean by pre-acquisition. So you guys can start to see how these games use the same fundamental building blocks, which is really what I'm trying to get across in this video, but they just switch out a few different aspects. So let's keep going. We're going to go through each one of these games. Okay. Where I feel like Ryet really innovated in my opinion is their level design, unique mechanic. Okay, exploration is not necessarily unique in the sense of it being brand new.

There's tons of exploration games, but they from my understanding were one of the first games in this genre to do exploration. Okay, so they crushed it on fantasy, unique mechanic, and level design. Okay, now let's look at tension. What is tension? Tension is basically like that moment of like, "Holy shit," that anticipation, right? When you actually get your egg in Ride a Pet, you'll notice there's no monster that chases you, but you still feel that same tension, right?

Why? Because there's time pressure. Your egg cracks in X amount of seconds. Okay? All of these games have tension. If we look at what's what's steel and eggs tension, right? We have PvPVE. Okay? Steal the egg, monster chases you, but also there's PvP. This was innovative because previously if you look at escape tsunami for brain rods, what was it? Just PvE. It's you versus the tsunami. Okay. Now, progression in all three of these games, ride a pet, steal an egg, escape tsunami.

What does it look like? Get faster. Okay. What does the long-term collection look like? Get pets. I mean, dude, literally all these games are pretty much get pets. We'll we'll dive in. Let's look at Steel Egg. Okay. fantasy. Steal a thing. Okay, basically steal egg. Okay, when I say fantasy, I'm pretty much talking about like the primary verb here. Okay, talking about the primary verb, and the primary verb pretty much depicts the fantasy.

Okay, of course, there's like, you know, world building, you're stealing the egg from the monster, etc., etc. But I'm talking mainly about the primary verb. Okay, what was the unique mechanic? I mean, people debatably, yeah, of course, there was the doom scrolling in the beginning, but if you look at Steel and Egg, like mechanically under the hood, what is it? Steel and Egg took Grow a Garden's innovative stock refresh where the stock refreshes every five minutes.

They took that same mechanic. If you guys have played Grow a Garden, you know what I'm talking about. The seeds restock every five minutes, right? In steal an egg, the eggs restock every five minutes. So, they took that mechanic from a UI frame and applied it to the world, which is very smart in my opinion. Okay. What's a core loop? I mean leave base get thing. Okay. What does how does RNG work? I mean it's a spawn table, right?

Eggs work on a spawn table. The role happens postacquisition. Meaning once I bring this thing back to my base, that's when the role happens. At least playerf facing. Okay. The back end it could be different. Now, how does the level design work? Well, it's a linear level design. It's the exact same level design as Escape Tsunami. It's the exact same level design is Kick a Lucky Block. Okay. Exact same level design as this game Surf and Rescue, which we'll get into. who I think is absolutely going to blow up by the way.

Okay, we look at tension. Okay, they innovated here because again previously escape tsunami PVE, right? Kick a lucky block PVE. In escape tsunami, you run away from tsunami. In kick a lucky block, you run away from tsunami. Okay, and steal an egg, you run away from monster, okay, which has been done on Roblox before in all these brain rock games, but they introduced PvP when you're escaping from the monster. And then that combined, okay, with the way the egg restock works stacked on a lot of FOMO, urgency, scarcity, that intensified this PvP.

Okay, how's progression work? Get faster, collect pets. All right, we look at one of the OGs, Escape Tsunam for Brain Rods. How do they innovate? Okay, I mean, first of all, this level design, like, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is like one of the first games where I saw this kind of linear level design. All right. What's the fantasy? Escape with valuable. Right. What's the unique mechanic? In my opinion, these two.

Okay. These two I would actually say these two and these two are probably it's hard to say, man. I mean, we'll chop it up, but like I think these two are the most important, but also if you innovate here, it can it can do a lot. So, let's keep looking at Escape Tsunami, right? What was their unique mechanic? Pressure valve level design. Really, really smart. What do I mean by pressure valve level design? I mean basically like you run to get thing.

Okay, but stop. Decide if you want to keep going, right? You run, you run, you run. Oh [ __ ] the tsunami is coming. Let me dip into the trough here. I'm safe. Tsunami can't get me. Let me run. Let me run. So it's like tension release. Tension release. Tension release. If you look at steal an egg, the moment you steal the egg, it's constant tension, right? The release happens when you get back to the safe zone. If you look at escape tsunami, that tension release cycle is compressed where you actually go to get the brain rots.

Okay, this was very innovative at its time. Okay, I mean, what's the core loop leave base, get thing? Okay, RNG, how does it work? It's the spawn table pre-acquisition, right? So, you just see the brain rots in the level. Okay, there's no role, but you'll see like how like this was like one of the OGs, right? And then this game happened and then this game was a spin-off. This game was a spin-off. This game was a spin-off.

Like these are all mechanically the same game under the hood. They just innovate in areas that really really matter. Like Ryet radio level design is very innovative. Like we haven't seen that, right? Combined with a strong fantasy. Okay, what's level design look like? I mean linear. These all have the same level design, these three games. Tension, I mean PVE, we went over that. So, let's look at Kick Lucky Block, right?

Because these games are very, very similar. Like both brain rock games. Kick Lucky Block is still surviving. Like that live ops team has to be goated. Okay, so what's the fantasy? Kick the thing, right? Kick to unlock things. Okay, where they innovated is they added a skill check. When you actually go to kick, it's a little tap the screen as the bar fills up. You guys know if you played kick a lucky block. Okay, core loop.

I mean, leave base. Good thing. Okay, RNG roll happens pre-acquisition. We went over that same level design PVE. Okay, now progression instead of get faster, get stronger. Okay, you can start to see how all these games have the same fundamental building blocks, but they just innovate in areas that matter. Okay, look at these are all innovations. Let's look at Dig and Clean. Okay, interesting game. What is the fantasy here?

Dig up treasure. Okay, what is the unique mechanic? The cleaning mechanic. I mean, I think that mechanic really, really helped carry this game because it's innovative. Okay, what's the core loop? I mean, leave base, get thing. Okay, I'm really simplifying this. Like, there's a lot more that goes into these games with like how progression actually works. Okay, like in digging clean, like yes, you can buy shovels, you can buy spray bottles, you can buy a new metal detector, but like fundamentally, how do you progress?

You get stronger because you get a better shovel. Level design. This one was interesting. Very simple. They didn't use linear level design. I mean, you can debate me on that. Maybe they did because you do, you know, eventually you can pay to unlock new islands, etc., etc. How does the RNG happen? I mean, spawn table roll happens postacquisition, at least player facing. Okay. Get stronger. And then this was different for collection.

Collect treasure instead of pets. You guys see where I'm going with this? Now, let's look at this game, Surf and Rescue, because this game mechanically under the hood is the exact same as this game. Feel free to disagree. I don't give a [ __ ] But where do they innovate with this game, Surf and Rescue? This game's going to blow up, by the way. Absolutely, this is going to blow up. Well, we look at first building block is the fantasy.

Okay, save animals. You guys got to understand the fantasy signals both unique mechanic and can also target a completely different audience. I would not be surprised if this is majorly a female audience. Okay, if this was male dominated, this is going to be female dominated. Completely different audience. Like they're going to absolutely clean up house. I think this game's going to blow up. Anyways, we look at unique mechanic.

Okay, both games have the same type of unique mechanic. I mean, this game also has surfing, which I guess you could say is a bit unique, but it's like the same type of level design as these two games, okay? Same type of RNG here. They use the linear level design, which is the same as these games, okay? They have PVE, where Dig and Clean did not have PVE. So, this is how it goes, guys. everyone I mean everyone wants to like claim like hey I have an original game idea but like dude every game is like derivative of other games okay it's very rare to have an original idea okay where you can innovate is areas that matter like I keep saying with unique mechanics that's where you can really innovate but if you look at digging clean like there's not much tension like yes there's tension when you're like trying to dig and you're trying to get the freaking thing out of the ground but there's nothing like chasing you there's no like crazy anticipation moment like holy [ __ ] just barely made it moments that all of these games have, okay, where the thing's chasing, you're like, "Holy [ __ ] I need to get this thing over to the safe zone." Okay, so I put not applicable, but there is a bit of tension.

But what did Surf and Rescue do? They added very clear PvE tension. Shark chases you, freaking stingray chases you. Okay, what is the actual progression? Okay, dig and clean, you get stronger. I mean by that I mean like you get better shovels so you are getting stronger in this game. You get faster, okay, and collect pets. Now you can see how all these games have the same fundamental building blocks but they innovated in areas that matter.

So let me show you if I were to start a brand new game today. Here's what I would do. Okay, first and foremost understand like what genre am I getting into? I'd pick a reference game. simply change 20% of it. This is all you need to make meaningful cash on Roblox. Okay? Now, the more you change in areas that matter, obviously, the more you're going to differentiate. You're going to eat up more market share. The game feels more unique.

But all you really need to do is change at the bare minimum 20% of it. So, let's look at Steel and Egg and let's look at my game Raisin Anomaly. Recent one that we just released. Okay. And I got two more on the way. So, Fantasy Steel Thing. Okay. fantasy for our game raise thing. Okay, I would not be surprised if this is primarily a male audience and our game has a good chunk of females. Okay, females that have never played Steel and Egg.

So, we innovated with the audience and with the fantasy. Okay, unique mechanic, egg restock. Yes, our game also has egg restock, but we also have feeding. Okay, the feeding mechanic. Is it revolutionary? Is it new? No, bro. It's in tons of games, okay? But we just swapped out in areas that matter with fantasy and unique mechanic. Okay, core loop, leave base, get thing. RNG is the exact same level design, tension. I mean, everything else is pretty much the exact same mechanically under the hood.

Okay. Now, is Raisin Anomaly going to be as big as Steel and Egg? Absolutely not, dude. Is it going to be a 100k CCU game? Absolutely not. But we're not talking about 100k CCU games in this video, guys. We're talking about, you know, one to 5K, maybe 10K. All you really need to do for 5 to 10K CCU is change 20% of it. Okay. Now, if you want to get 100K CCU, you can start to see where multiple innovations start to stack.

Look at Ride a Pet, right? Radio level design, different type of tension. Okay? Different fantasy, different unique mechanic. All right, they changed probably 40% here. Like they looked at steel and egg, okay? And like look at these differences. Boom. Boom. All right. So, the more changes you can make, the better. But they need to be meaningful. They need to be studied and researched. But if you want a simple way to win, bro, you just look at the genre you're entering.

Okay? Chunk it down like this. see where can I innovate on the fantasy and the unique mechanic and make some paper. That's pretty much it. Hopefully you guys got value from this video. I try to really like simplify this. There's obviously so much more that goes into game design, like progression, how long it takes for a player to progress in the first five minutes, you know, retention mechanics, expanding on your collection fantasy, mutations.

Like there is so much more that goes into it, but like fundamentally these are the building blocks. And I think if you can start to look at games as just building blocks like this, it can make it really easy for you to start to innovate. So that's it for this video guys. Peace and love. I'm out.