As an avid artist growing up, @Qwelver dreamed of creating her own cartoon series — until she found video games. She realized how much gaming revolves around art. Now, she runs BlushCrunch Studio and its hero title Dandy’s World as its primary game designer and artist. Even while still in alpha, Dandy’s World has climbed the ranks of trending experiences due to fans of its unique world of Toons and Twisteds. In this spotlight, we chat with Qwelver on how she conceptualized Dandy’s World and grew into a game designer.
Creating Dandy and His Twisted World
Back in 2022, Qwelver first thought up Dandy, the colorful flower-like shopkeeper, before having an idea for the game. At the time, while Qwelver knew she wanted the game to be anchored in “Dandy’s World”, she didn’t have all of the technical skills and tools yet to fulfill her vision. So while dreaming about Dandy’s World, Qwelver was also working on a smaller tower defense project, Flavor Frenzy.
Through progressing on Flavor Frenzy, she learned game design using Roblox tutorials, and over time, felt more confident in her skills. She also had time to give Dandy’s World more thought before jumping straight into development. After crystallizing the vision for Dandy, Qwelver built the world around him, thought of more characters, and developed the gameplay. She wanted to create a fun experience that allowed groups of people to come together again and again.
In June 2024, Qwelver launched Dandy’s World in alpha, with the specific goal of building her game with the community in mind. She wanted to allow her community to influence production earlier on, as she’s always looking for feedback to better improve her players’ experience.
With its release, she made one promotional video, which now has over 1M views:
Over time, through word-of-mouth, friends playing together, and fan-made content all over social media, Dandy’s World became extremely popular. Its peak CCU so far has been 875K during the first-ever Easter Event!
So how exactly did Qwelver design this “Very Exciting and Unforgettable Show”?
Adding Toons, Twisteds, and More
If you didn’t know, Dandy’s World has 33 Toons (including Dandy) and 33 Twisteds.
While working on Flavor Frenzy, Qwelver would take breaks by sketching up Dandy. Once she was satisfied with Dandy’s character, she began imagining Dandy’s friends. She would take the base of Dandy and add unique elements and personality traits. One character is a TV that’s focused on technology, another is a moon that’s all about space, and a third is an ammonite that teaches about prehistoric life. Qwelver wanted to give Dandy friends who weren’t just flowers but still made sense as a friend group.
Each Toon has a twisted counterpart called a Twisted, which you’re trying to survive by completing machines while keeping Twisteds occupied. Dandy’s World is unique on Roblox for many reasons, but one of the biggest is that players do not play as their Roblox Avatars. This is generally considered a risk when making a game on Roblox because players spend so much time perfecting their Roblox avatar and pouring their identity into it. But Qwelver found that players love playing as Toons! They’re able to really be a part of the story she’s telling and experience the lore of Dandy’s World through the eyes of a Toon.
Designing Gardenview Center Level by Level
Once Qwelver determined the cast of characters for Dandy’s World, she then started designing the various levels, or “floors”, of the Gardenview Center, the main setting of the game. There are 19 different floors currently, and each floor has different spawn points for Twisteds, items, and machines.
Qwelver oversees all artwork related to Dandy’s World and personally ensures that everything remains in-style and is visually consistent, which thus strengthens the game’s brand and player experience. Additionally, she leads game design and spends a lot of time playtesting with her team to ensure everything is fun and feels right before releasing it to players!
Some key factors of her gameplay and visual designs include:
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Balancing Challenge and Reward: No two floors are the same, given the many combinations of floors and Twisteds. There are many elements of the game that change with each playthrough, making the game endlessly replayable and ensuring there is always a new challenge. Whether it’s a new set of Twisteds the player is against, or a new batch of items or ichor machines spread in different places, there’s always something new to solve.
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Creating an Immersive Environment: All of the floors are handmade and built out with players’ intentions in mind. For example, playing with lighting in an environment helps the floor feel more immersive and dynamic. Qwelver uses point lights to make certain areas slightly brighter and subtly pull players into rooms they may not have seen otherwise. She also uses item spawn points to decide where on the map the items are available to spawn, adding to the exploratory nature of the game. Fun fact: one of Qwelver’s favorite floors is Shelly-themed. She’s an ammonite who loves educating people about dinosaurs, so the floor has giant fossil exhibits in soft-yellow lighting to give a “sandy” vibe.
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Enforcing Collaboration and Connection: In Dandy’s World, there are no rewards for hurting or sabotaging other people. It’s a very collaborative and team-oriented strategy-based game, which Qwelver intended. Due to this design, she’s seen countless people connect, make friends, and help each other progress.
Listening to the Dandy’s World Community
Qwelver launched Dandy’s World as an alpha, with the intention of adding a lot more to it. Therefore, feedback and criticism are crucial for Qwelver to continue developing the game into its final version.
Some of the feedback Qwelver gets revolves around balancing and the maps themselves. For example, there was a lot of feedback around one of the characters named Scraps and how she didn’t have enough to make her viable. People played her to gain another character, and then never played her again. Qwelver was able to go back to the drawing board and even brought some ideas to her players over chat. Based on the community’s feedback, Scraps was buffed and her grappling ability was made more powerful by enabling her to use it on machines as well as other players.
Another example of getting community feedback involved specifics about the floors. Players requested things such as larger floor designs. So for last year’s Christmas event, which had a special event floor, Qwelver applied previous recommendations from the community. The community was thrilled and it became a fan-favorite floor. Now, Qwelver is going back to some previous floors and adjusting them based on fan feedback.
Qwelver believes that by working hand in hand with her community on Dandy’s World, she is building a more thoughtful – and ultimately successful – game.
If you have a dream Roblox project in mind, Qwelver recommends taking your time. It took her a couple of years to analyze what makes a good Roblox game, build up her skillset, and devote herself to development at this scale. Rather than rushing into it, take the time to clearly understand your goals and outcome. And believe in yourself! 
Thank you so much @Qwelver for chatting with us! We can’t wait to see where you take Dandy’s World 
To keep in touch, follow Qwelver and BlushCrunch Studio on Roblox, YouTube, and Tiktok.
