On August 1, Roblox players gathered in an arena surrounded by Greek columns to compete for glory and collect Silver and Shines 
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So what exactly went into building The Games? We spoke with the creators of Midnight Racing: Tokyo, Dress to Impress, and Michael’s Zombies to understand their process behind making new quests, hiding special items, and creating hype for the event.
Midnight Racing: Tokyo 
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Midnight Racing: Tokyo (MR:T) combines the thrilling high of driving with a 90s Japanese aesthetic, based on the nostalgic streetcar racing phenomenon. In the game, there are over 170 unique cars for players to race through the streets of Japan, spanning seven maps across Tokyo, Mt. Otsuki, and Ichikawa.
@bigcarcrazyboy co-founded the game with @sixpenceRBX in 2018 after their Tokyo map showcase gained popularity. Unfortunately, their game got hit with some roadblocks, so the original game was lost and had to be rebuilt — but that didn’t stop their success. Their loyal player base followed them, and in 2019, the studio was able to gain back control of their experience. This marked a turning point, allowing them to make significant updates and ensure the game’s success. The team of 90 developers at devGem is made up of four categories of staff: moderation, car modelers, programmers, and map builders. For The Games, three developers worked on the event.
Joining Gold Label
When approached to participate in an event for the first time, the team was excited to try including a narrative with dialogue. The story went like this: you’re new to Tokyo City and you want to join this street racing club called Gold Label. To achieve this, you had to complete three quests:
- You talk to Aki at Gold Label HQ, who directs you to the dealership to pick up your car, gets you to upgrade it, and then assigns you tasks.
- You talk to an NPC who tasks you with delivering car parts to the team’s mechanic as quickly as you can. There’s also the option to race the NPC to the shop.
- The last quest is to compete in the special racing event and place in the top 3. If you make it through, you’re accepted into the Gold Label crew.
The team’s hope was that by having people learn how to buy, upgrade, and race a car, they’d understand the mechanics of the core game with a bit of fun MR:T lore and want to return to try a different car on a different map.
The Process
Programming the Pathfinding
While trying something new in the game was exciting, the team faced challenges implementing everything they wanted. For example, to help new players find their way around, they added a mini map navigation system. The pathfinding service range was too short, so we have to create a custom pathfinding solution which was to map out our entire map and traffic pattern.
Growing The Community
Prior to the event, the team was super hyped to bring their fanbase an update. Lots of players have left or got tired of the game over the years, so they expected that bringing a fresh challenge would delight returning players. They also have spent a lot of time making the game more accessible to new players, from changing the way the cars drive to changing the default settings for how realistic the car looks.
Results
- bigcarcrazyboy learned a lot about the onboarding process and enjoyed seeing the creative ways new users navigated the game.
- Peak CCU was at 8.3K.
- When Midnight Racing: Tokyo was promoted on Home for The Games, DAU surged to 1.3M users.
- Some feedback they received was that players wanted to race against a “ghost” for consistent difficulty, instead of waiting to race other drivers. This is so players have another way to obtain the top-tier award.
Midnight Racing: Tokyo’s Tips for Participating in Events
- Make your game as accessible as possible. Building a game that players can play anywhere - on a potato device, on the go, without internet, etc can dramatically increase your games appeal because the barrier to play your game is much lower
- Know why players play your game. Focus on growing the community and fandom around your game rather than sacrificing your current audience’s enjoyment factor to pull these fans from other places.
- Start early! If you give yourself a buffer, you’ll still be working right up until the last minute to get things bug free. Prioritize making sure you can have as big of a buffer as possible
Dress To Impress 
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Dress To Impress (DTI) is a fashion dress-up game for players to express their style, compete with friends, and embark on a stylish journey. The nine person development team consists of three modelers, an animator, a builder, a hair modeler, a makeup artist, a scripter, and a UI artist, and everyone helped out for The Games.
Dress To Impress has participated in previous Roblox events this year and noticed their game hadn’t appealed to male users. With The Games, the team wanted to make their quests more inclusive by adding masculine clothing, hairstyles, and poses.
Their quests included:
- Competing as a duo and placing in the top 4.
- Competing in a mermaid-themed obby and placing in top 3.
- Competing in a mermaid race and placing in top 3. You dodge obstacles and can swim through bubble rings for 5-second boosts.
When you completed all three quests, you could unlocked the code to redeem a limited edition mermaid set 
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To keep the quests in line with their core gameplay, they kept small details consistent throughout, such as having a 5-minute intermission before the race for people to dress up as mermaids and having podium-style competitions for the obby and mermaid race.
The Process
Making the Mermaid Race
When the team was tasked with combining magic and sports, a mermaid race just made sense with their newly released mermaid tail. To create the new mermaid look and environment, they took inspo from Pinterest and searched “mermaid lagoon”.
From there, they started modeling their assets in Blender. For the obby, they made coral look realistic, using the Array Modifier and Skin Modifier. To make the mermaid race more challenging, the team added squids, jellyfish, and anchors as obstacles and boost bubble as power ups.
Marketing the Mermaids
To promote events, social media manager @Umoyae posts teaser videos showcasing the new items or maps on TikTok and X. The team had a steady stream of content leading up to the event, by teasing their summer update about a week before The Games and then quickly following with The Games promo. Their promo also included a post on X revealing the limited mermaid set prize.
Results
- On day 1 of The Games, DTI had 500K concurrent players — their highest to date.
- Players found their quests fun and innovative!
- Compared to previous events, the team had better time management to ensure that the quality of their update was top tier, while also prioritizing the team’s wellbeing and self care.
DTI’s Tips for Participating in Events
- Have an organized plan or a detailed idea for the Roblox event update.
- Remember that planning events can take a lot of time. Make sure to keep things high-quality, but also don’t forget to take care of yourself.
- Keep clear communication with the team and Roblox- Don’t hesitate to ask for changes or help!
Michael’s Zombies 
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During his freshman year of college, @Kyles45678 teamed up with @1Joeb to create a zombie game centered around the famous michael cat that stands on the shoulder of Kyles45678’s avatar. Kyles45678 asked the UGC creator @AshCr4ft for permission to use michael the cat as the game’s protagonist — and the rest is hiss-tory 
. The Michael’s Zombies team has since grown to about 12 developers and a total of 30 team members who worked on The Games event and are developing other exciting new projects.
The Process
Before committing to the event, Kyles45678 asked his team if they wanted to take a month out of normal development to work on The Games. They all agreed it would be beneficial to participate, so they jumped into a video call and started brainstorming. They aligned that Michael’s Zombies’ standard gameplay of surviving waves of zombies wouldn’t be as appealing to a casual audience, so they came up with a quicker series of minigames. Also to save time, they reused code structures that are currently supporting the main game.
From Brainstorm to Build
The three quests took place on a lush, sunny island called Michael’s Tropical Resort. Upon landing on the resort, you were tasked with three quests:
- Earn a total of 20,000 points from the Baseball Minigame. Players had the option to use tennis rackets or a baseball bat to reflect pitched baseballs to the rhythm of the playing song during the minigame.
- Earn a total of 60 points from the Skeet Shooting Minigame. Players had to shoot as many options as possible within 30 seconds.
- Win the boss fight with a pirate ship full of pirate michaels
. This quest used the baseball reflection skills from quest #1 to reflect the cannonballs and the skeet shooting skills from quest #2 to shoot at the flaming cannonballs.
To tie in with core gameplay and save some time on development, the team re-used the reflection systems of the baseballs and cannonballs from a boss fight in Michael Barrel. And the skeet shooting with pots was re-used from previous MZ maps Undead Nocturn and Joe’s Gun Game. For hiding the Shines, the team gave one freebie, hid three within the main quests, then hid the last shine in the Lighthouse Challenge area. In this bonus area, zombies spawned constantly and players were expected to go with their friends and battle zombies to obtain the shine.
Creating Michael’s Tropical Resort
The MZ modeler team was hard at work creating map prop assets for their builder, from beach chairs to sailboats.
For the music playing throughout the resort, the team originally created a more upbeat, acoustic tune that you’d expect for an island-themed hub.
The team debated and felt the song wasn’t edgy enough so they layered in more beats, going for a darker undertone. They landed on this:
For building the layout for the beach and resort, the team imported their previous Lighthouse map to speed up their build. While the artist and modelers finished making the assets, the rest of the team used placeholder assets to lay out the entire map.
The first minigame they developed was the baseball minigame, including Zombie cheering animations:
For the Pirate Ship boss fight, Kyles45678 used placeholder models to code the minigame:
He also updated the code for Michaels walking around:
The team had some fun moments in Team Create together as well…
Results
- Most of the community loved the event, while others were disappointed that it wasn’t a round-based map.
- DAU nearly quadrupled from ~1K players to ~4k players during The Games
- Gamepass sales increased by 50%
- Veteran players really want MZ to turn the event map into a permanent round-based survival map — and in the future they just might
MZ’s Tips for Participating in Events
- Document your ideas as soon as you think of them in case you forget and need them for reference.
- Take feedback as much as possible and apply it. Feedback from fellow developers helps a ton and can make or break the UX; feedback from newer players can be useful for understanding difficulty. Apply Roblox’s feedback!
- Try your absolute best to make the best gameplay experience. Memorable games in the event make the event better as a whole. If you as a developer are not genuinely enjoying your own event, then change it.
Thank you to the teams at Midnight Racing: Tokyo, Dress to Impress, and Michael’s Zombies for chatting with us!
