27 January 2023

Assimilation Tag (2023 ROBLOX Internal Game Jam)

About

I was in the 2023 ROBLOX internal game jam, which is an event that ROBLOX holds every year so their enginers can get a taste of what it’s like to develop games on ROBLOX. I was lucky to be the Guide for Team 8, and we produced a battle royale-style “conversion” tag game; in other words, you shoot someone and they join your team.

Out of 20 game jam teams, we were one of only three-ish teams that produced a playable demo by the end of the week. We also ran ads and got real players on our game!

It was hilarious to play as the different characters (horses, annoying orange, Elon Musk, clone troopers, sushi chefs… there are OVER FIFTY unique characters) and it was really fun to convert other people to your team.

However, the gunplay was really awkward and difficult, and the matches had a tendency to yo-yo – once there was only one person left, it could be really hard to find them, and it was comparatively easy for them to catch a hapless target by surprise, convert them to their team, and then flip everyone else. Matches would drag on through multiple cycles of this, which could get tedious.

I guess you can’t produce a triple-A game in a week. Who knew?

Overall I’m really grateful for the opportunity to work with ROBLOX like that, and I made a bunch of new engineer friends. :^)

Thanks ROBLOX!