I’ve been working on my dream game for the past few weeks. It’s something I’m genuinely passionate about—unique, creative, and built with long-term vision. But when I look at the front page of Roblox, it’s honestly a bit discouraging. The top games all seem to follow the same formula: “Grow a Garden,” “Steal a Brain,” and other quick, trend-based titles.
These games aren’t necessarily bad, but they tend to be very simple in concept—nothing groundbreaking or particularly ambitious. It feels like originality is being overlooked in favor of quick simple loops. For example, “Grow a Garden” somehow pulled 78% of Blox Fruits’ player base, despite offering much less in terms of depth or content.
If you have passion? Go for it. If not? You can always focus on other aspects.
Older players do exist in Roblox. It is an outraging truth that low-effort games “experiences” are abundant in this platform. However, you can always target your desired demographic. It’s all up to you on how do you sponsor it, brand it—but most importantly the topic of the game. What it is about, its genre, visuals. These all help.
There are great masterpieces on Roblox that cater to older audiences and are highly successful. Think of CENTAURA. Maybe not “older audiences” at all, but there are many successful high-effort projects that may appeal to a wide range of audiences. Think of The Mimic, SPECTER, many examples.
So? Just do what you do.
The simplest explanation to offer is that Roblox trends go through phases as time goes on. Whenever a game gets popular and said genre is very profitable, you are going to see a lot of similar games pop up. Roblox trends are constantly changing and almost always have a lifecycle between 1 month and 2 years. While there are always exceptions, and the original game to kickstart a trend will often live for longer than the general trend (sometimes they just never die), most games will die out, thus creating the apt title of “cash grab”.
As for your main question, it depends. “Cash grabs” (trend chasers) have a bit of an advantage in the algorithm initially, but “trend starters” (original games) have more potential in the long run, assuming your game is actually good and appeals to a wide audience. There is often more risk in original games as you’re working with an unproven formula, but if you wanna do it, just do it.
You should never compare your game to what’s trending on the front page. A game doesn’t have to “hit big” to be meaningful. Even if you only have 10, 100, or 1,000 consistent players, that’s still a real community. Unless you are creating a cash grab.
it will be always worth it, you feel good doing it, and there will always the possibility of them blowing up and becoming popular. You also gain studio experience, and many good things. But don’t always think on your game needing to become popular to call it a success. It’s the effort and passion that matters