Teensy Tiny Tankery is a new arcade title in development for young audiences on the ROBLOX Platform. Set in the style of a children’s play-room, players take on the roles of toy tanks on a quest to defend their outpost from waves of enemies. Whether solo or with friends, every strike comes the potential for power-ups to drop and provide a much-needed boost in the heat of battle.
In the Technical Alpha, Players win after defeating 20 waves of enemy tanks. Enemy tanks win if they manage to capture the base within 2 minutes, however, players can enter the capture area and contest the countdown to buy more time and clear more tanks. We plan to expand the variety of tanks and power-ups over time, through careful playtesting and balance refinements.
Control Scheme - UPDATED 28/01/25
Currently there exists a handful of controls with plans to expand support to Mobile and VR (if it’s not uncomfortable for the latter). These are:
Control Scheme for Keyboard and Mouse:
- W/A/S/D → Movement
- Space → Jump/Hop
- Left Mouse → Fire Projectile
- Mouse Movement → Face turret towards position
- Mouse Scroll Wheel → Zoom In/Out
- Z → Toggle Chat Visibility
- Tab → Toggle Leaderboard Visibility.
Control Scheme for Gamepads:
- Left Joystick / Thumbstick 1 → Movement
- Right Joystick / Thumbstick 2 → Turret Rotation
- Left Shoulder → Zoom Out
- Right Shoulder → Zoom In
- Right Trigger → Fire Cannon
- Button A → Hop
The tank controller already has been written from the ground up, based on design conventions from Unreal Engine 4.27, to be device-agnostic. Improvements and expanded device support will come as soon as possible.
On behalf of Neptuna, I am proud to announce the public release of a Technical Alpha and share our journey to make an all-ages tank game on ROBLOX. This build has been in development for 16 hours as part of the GameRepublic Graduate Skills Bootcamp by a team of five participants, with it’s public reveal during the Trends and Opportunities for 2025 Event hosted at The Guildhall, York (U.K.) on Thursday 23rd January.
We would love to hear feedback on the core mechanics, game concept and gameplay loop. The goal of this Technical Alpha is to develop a core controller system, reliable server networking and mechanics to support a wide range of modes and mechanics for players of all kinds to enjoy in future updates.
Roadmap
In the coming weeks we will be adding an in-game tutorial integrated into the user experience, more enemy types and power-ups, as well as features like Customization for personalised tanks. Some features have already got core implementation built into them, and can be taken further than before. This build has already received an update in the 24 hours since the it’s public reveal, where several requested features by attendees have been added for accessibility.
Updates
26 January 2025
Visual Changes
- Flagpole Animation added to the game. The Flag will now raise at the start of a round, lower at the end of a round and lower progressively while AI capture the flag. If the flag capture process is contested, the flag will stop animating until players or AI have control of the flag, and return to the start position if players regain control.
UI Changes
- WinryChat no longer plays sound effects. The current Sound Effects used need replacing as they are not created in-house nor belong to Neptuna.
Lighting Changes
- ColorCorrection Saturation reduced to
0.35from0.5.
Physics Changes
- Player Tanks now correctly move independent of frame-rate, and have adjusted values for the
VelcoityModuleattributesAccelerationRate,ForwardVelocityMultiplierandReverseVelocityMultiplier. These are now0.5from0.015,32from0.5and16from0.35to account for all frame rates. - Player Tanks now correctly rotate independent of frame-rate, and have adjusted the value for the
RotationModuleattributeRotationSpeedfrom1.5to120.
Difficulty Changes
- Slightly reduced the range of values that the first
math.randomfunction call will return when trying to get a new value for the amount of tanks to spawn.
F.A.Q
We had been asked quite a few questions during our pitches and presentations by various people, and some recurring ones came up, so here they are. (We’ll update this if new frequent questions appear in this thread!)
Why ROBLOX?
ROBLOX is a multi-platform experience with a proven track record for being able to deliver game content to a large player base, with updates taking seconds to be shipped to production servers. Unity and Unreal both require additional team members, incur additional costs for multiplayer titles and necessitate additional server security when handling Player Data in accordance to the GDPR. As ROBLOX has the networking capabilities and tools catering to various Data Protection Acts, especially involving young audiences, we felt this was the most appropriate platform.
What is your target audience? / Young audience is vague, what is your core demographic?
We’re looking to design a complete title focused on players of ages 11-13, as we pitched to GameRepublic, NextGen Skills Academy and the participants of the GameRepublic Trends and Opportunities for 2025 event. That isn’t to say we will outright prohibit younger or older players from experiencing our title, but we will be making necessary steps to ensure the safety and inclusivity of younger audiences first. This is our first title and we would love it most of all if everyone can feel like they’re in a safe environment.
Wii Tanks?
Not per-se a question, but we heard and spoke about it a bit. Wii Tanks is one of a few inspirations we drew from, but only a handful of props and systems took inspiration from that game. Toy Commander was another major influence, with World of Tanks Blitz and War Thunder playing minor influences in accessibility features. We felt that there weren’t any games like Wii Tanks or Toy Commander that gave players access to tank combat in a non-violent, non-graphic design style and that we have a chance to offer a new idea in the space for this platform.
What are your monetization plans?
The big scary question that comes up with every game release. As of right now, we are focused on the gameplay and game features. This isn’t something we’re looking at until much later on, but have had to cover with multiple people ahead of time.
However, should we return to this for the future: No gambling, no season passes. We do not believe these are reliable revenue sources and have seen games release these features in ways that can be considered predatory for young audiences and cause long-term damage to the gaming space as a result. If you download content on your device, even temporarily, you should have the ability to access it from the start, earn access to it through gameplay or pay for access to it for a one-time fee. Internet isn’t cheap for everyone, and we want to make sure all players can get their bandwidth’s worth when they join our experiences.
What are the plans for content?
We really want to focus on maps, cosmetic items (such as tank parts and color customization). The selection of items created for the game will be checked and verified to make sure it meets all content procedures for games with the “Minimal” rating.
Our biggest concern is running into the dreaded “Fear of Missing Out” issue. We’ll always be looking for suggestions on how to make content available to everyone and especially in ways that don’t just involve selling it. We would love to do events and content in ways that give everyone fair, and easy opportunity to earn rewards. Everyone’s had that moment of school, university or work taking up so much time that you miss out on something you want… and it sucks. So let’s avoid that!
Will there be Voice Chat or similar features?
No. This is not something we wish to add in our titles. ROBLOX does moderate the voice chat and while we wish we could find a way to ensure this feature is safe for all ages, there will be ways people can easily bypass this or ask to use other social media platforms that could put young players in danger. If you wish to chat with friends and play the game strategically however, safe online social platforms with voice call features and playing together IRL may be your best bet. We won’t stop genuine strategists trying to overcome the hordes, as good teamwork is irreplaceable.
Credits
Neptuna is a five-person team, with a variety of experience on multiple platforms and in multiple roles. We’d love to share our full credits here, but there are some concerns to doing that directly (and we’re not sure if it violates the DevForum rules…), so here’s the cast behind Teensy Tiny Tankery!
Note: An About-us section for each of us will be filled here tomorrow or Monday, but most of the team members are sleeping after a long two-day workshop and event combo!
Sam / samven20 - Games Designer
Hugh / WolfHVM - Sound Designer, 3D Artist
Nick / VoxPrismatis - 3D Artist
Rory / Symbol3D - 3D Artist
May / extraclear - Tech Artist, Games Programmer
We have a mixed background of experience that we were able to pull from, and although only one member of the team had prior development experience with ROBLOX, we collaborated, discovered and shared a plethora of platform knowledge and engine tricks together to bring a title to life. One of which we’re truly proud of.
controlling the tank felt like I was fighting my own intuition. In my head, pressing W would make the tank turn and go up like it does in Tiny Tanks, even when looking at the indicators, it was confusing. Probably made worse because of the high fps making everything faster, too