Need help brainstorming further for my game development!

[RubenHgamer (ItsRubenX)]

Ello everyone, hope y’all have been having a great day

You have come to this post for a reason, and I’m going to give you that very reason. As for the first time, I’m going to get feedback from my fellow devforumers for my new game!

“Now @RubenHgamer, what might this game you are making be about?”
Well, I’m about to tell you that, but before that I will give you a little history about myself.

A little history about myself (Worth reading if you want to catch the full story)

So, I am ItsRubenX, commonly known as @RubenHgamer. I’m a free-time Roblox developer (as in, I like developing in my free time), as of now, for nearly 5 years (since September 2020).
I’ve learned a lot in those years. I’ve learned how to program, make simple builds, and use physics. Although I wasn’t good at the previously mentioned and maths, I still tried to learn what I could. And I must admit, I still do have some things to learn.

I’ve created many games in these years. I hear you thinking: “Where might these games be then?” Well, that’s the thing: most of them were never released. And to be even more descriptive: all of them aren’t even close to being finished. And why, you might be thinking?

MOTIVATION ISSUES

Yes, I have a lack of motivation to finish the games. I bet some of you are familiar with the following pattern.
1: You find a very interesting and intriguing topic
2: You start making a game on that one topic
3: You find yet another intriguing topic
4: You start working on the other topic
5: The other game is left behind
Even while I still try to come back after some time, my motivation takes over the steering wheel and drives me off the road again. Over and over again.

Now, with this part of history about me, let’s go back to the present.

So, after many projects and failures, I’ve decided to make a game honoring the most beloved period of Roblox’s timeline, namely the classic era.
And, with the theme introduction out of the way, it’s finally time to announce the genre of the game, namely ZOMBIE SURVIVAL.

The idea

I can hear your thoughts: “A zombie survival game? In the big 2025?!”
Yes, and I’ll tell you how that’ll work.

In the current modern Roblox era, I’ve seen the classic theme returning to more of the top page games (you may correct me if I’m wrong). Think of games like grow a garden, Forsaken, and something evil will happen (and probably many more games). They all have adopted the classic style in some kind of way. May that be the map, using stud surfaces and blocky shapes, or even using the classic form factor. But in my opinion, making the map look classic is only the beginning of capturing the real feeling of classic games. Some might refer to this as ‘retroslop’, although I’m not going to be the one putting a stamp on them.
In my opinion, you can only really call a game truly classic if it has at least two of those points:

• Classic map (stud surfaces, form factor, possibly reusing old ones like Haunted Mansion, Glass Houses, etc.)
• Classic lighting (soft to no shadows at all, classic skybox, using the built-in fog rather than the Atmosphere instance)
• Classic meshes (character head)
• Classic UI (hint, message, classic chat)
• Gear! (sword, bomb, rocket launcher, superball, paintball gun, slingshot, trowel, hyperlasergun, etc, etc…)

Now you might ask, why haven’t I included animations? Or sparkles, fire, or smoke?
Because, in my opinion, these aren’t the most crucial instances to creating a classic-feeling game.
And that’s also why I’m going to introduce the style of my game here.

The style that has always been stuck inside my head and was calling to me to be used in a game, is… cartoony! Yes! I like cartoony stuff and always thought this would be my most fitting style, although I’m kinda bad at drawing. It’s not just a certain game style I like, but rather a mix between the styles of the thumbnails of Project Remix, untitled tag game, Forsaken, something evil will happen, and Super Doomspire.

For a better description, here are some images of what I currently have!

Now with classic guns!

The possibilities for this game idea could be endless. That’s why I made this post afterall.

I did manage to think of some gamemodes, so you don’t have to. Players are able to vote for a gamemode ahead of a round.

• Classic - Players must fend off waves of zombies while trying to stay alive for 5 minutes straight. The one with the most points wins the round.
• Helicopter Havoc - Without any weapons, players must stay alive until the choppers arrive. If they end up entering one, they win. Anyone else left behind loses.
• Payload Panic - Players must escort a vehicle through the map while defending it from zombies. Are the zombies able to bring its health to zero before it reaches the end? Everyone loses.

And now, to finally finish the story, I want to hear YOUR voice!

What do you think of my idea? Do you like it? Is there anything I could improve or change? Let me hear it and don’t be afraid to ask questions!

[Foxstream52]

I like your idea overall and i think you should definitely go forward with it. I do have some suggestions/ideas though.

1. Try not to use studs for every part of everything, since it often looks better if you have some smooth stuff too. If thats not what youre going for, then that’s fine but i personally think it would look nice to mismatch studs and plastic.

2. I think you could have quests, like kill this many zombies, or win this many matches. Players often like having something to accomplish, which also brings me to my next idea. Acheivements, they can be used to earn a secondary currency and can cover broader more “lifetime” quests. Like kill 1000 zombies. Or win 200 matches. Stuff that takes a while can be an achievement that awards a badge as well as good rewards.

3. I think you should definitely have the ability to upgrade (which u prolly already have planned), stuff like speed, health, power, weapons, abilities, etc etc.

4. I have some gamemodes idea. Like an infected gamemode where a few playera starts as a zombie and infects other players. Also, adding onto your helicopter idea, you can make it kinda like call of duty zombies where u unlock different areas to get to an exfil, ya know?

Anyways, i like your idea and hope i added onto it in a somewhat useful way. Goodluck with the project going forward, and keep me posted abt it, sounds fun

[RubenHgamer (ItsRubenX)]

Hello everyone!

First of all, I’m happy to say that I’m still busy working on the game, and I haven’t lost any motivation yet (yay! :D)
And thank you @Foxstream52, for the valuable suggestions that you send.
I’m back with some updates on what I’ve added since I posted the first post.

1. Old crosshair, new vibe

Yup, my idea was to create a dynamic crosshair of the classic crosshair (basically the one used for all gears). But then I ran into the problem that the classic crosshair is just a single image, which isn’t great if you want to make a dynamic crosshair. So I went into my photo editing program and split the crosshair into 3 parts: the ring, the dot, and the reloading text. This makes it easy to add click feedback to the ring, while also being able to change the dots’ color and make the reloading text visible or not.
Enough talking for now, let me just show it to ya.

By the way, the impact effect that you see is from the classic paintball gun.

2. Round system

I’ve managed to make a fully functioning round system. It currently includes intermission, map and gamemode voting, the round itself, and all with including countdowns with UI. I’ve written multiple modules for the system, so it’s easy for me to understand, and it is even easier to add new game modes.

Watch Desktop 2025.08.26 - 17.22.26.02 (online-video-cutter.com) | Streamable

3. The first weapons

It took some time, but I’ve managed to create the first weapons. Although still not completely finished, their functionality is as good as done.
The weapons I’ve created are the classic paintball gun, slingshot, rocket launcher, and superball. I’ve kept their functionality the same as the originals, except for the superball, where I added a charge system that allows you to throw it further depending on how long you hold your mouse button down. If you’ve read the initial post, you have read that I was going to add new and cool-looking effects, which I have also added to the weapons. Here is a demonstration:

Watch Desktop 2025.08.26 - 17.26.26.03 (online-video-cutter.com) | Streamable

4. Future ideas

I have thought of some new ideas, which I would like to have feedback on, or ideas for.

Weapon categories: primary, backup, melee, and gadgets.

The first three are self-explanatory. With the gadgets I have in mind, that the bombs and shield gears fit perfectly into this category. Imagine you are running away from the zombies, and you press Z to drop a subspace tripmine, which blows them to pieces. I also think they should be either 3 charges per round or just a long reload (30 seconds or more).

Zombie types

Of course, you can’t have a zombie survival game where there is only one type of zombie. The game gets far more interesting if you have different types of zombies, for which you have to think of a strategy in order to beat them. There can be just faster than usual zombies, but there can also be bigger zombies, which have the ability to ground slam. This is probably one of the topics I’m gonna need a lot of ideas for.

So, once again, what do you think of the ideas and progress of my game? If you have an idea or a question, don’t be afraid to ask!

[Ask_Allow (Execute)]

Your game sounds really cool and I sort of relate to the motivational issues part since I’ve had a lot of projects I’ve never actually finished. The classic style of it isn’t really my thing but it’s still nice that old models, sounds and images are still used to this day.

I do have an idea of a gamemode though, since u mentioned weapon categories (or more like item categories than just weapons) u could add a gamemode where it randomizes these in your inventory.
Also I’m not sure if I’ve missed this but players can respawn on classic, no? You could try to strip that away from the randomizer mode (or add lives) so people don’t reset until they get the loadout they want. I like these kinds of gamemodes, since the game picks things for you instead of having you choose stuff.

I also think the vfx you made look cool especially considering the fact u said u suck at drawing

Anyway I can’t wait to play this since there’s a huge shortage of actually good games on roblox.

[ScrollFrameRotation (BannedFromTheDevFrm)]

@RubenHgamer

They all have adopted the classic style in some kind of way

albeit very terribly. nobody likes GaG’s artstyle

anyway, sounds like a cool idea. i actually made a game based on mid 2000’s roblox, too, although its very old. maybe you can take some inspiration from it: https://www.roblox.com/games/125362938629048/Zombies-Arcade

question: is there going to be any first person shooter elements in this? would be cool if you could zoom in and have viewmodels like Arsenal. was always a cool feature to me.

[RubenHgamer (ItsRubenX)]

@ScrollFrameRotation

question: is there going to be any first person shooter elements in this? would be cool if you could zoom in and have viewmodels like Arsenal. was always a cool feature to me.

Yup, it was initially my first idea to make the game first person too.
And if I have the motivation for it, I might as well add an over-the-shoulder camera, and let the player decide which camera mode they like better.