Spotlight #010
DevForum Spotlight: Meet rolbloxguy1876 and vastqud!
T -5 seconds until Liftoff…
5…4…3…2…1…
Liftoff is a go.
Meet the creators behind the game Liftoff at Light Works!
Today you’re going to meet two outstanding developers @vastqud and @rolbloxguy1876, and get a look at some of the work they’ve put into the game Liftoff, and one of their new upcoming projects Arctica!
Liftoff is a game in which, you can unlock a total of 31 unique rockets and advance through a Tech Tree. Deploy payloads in outer space, complete Orders, hire scientists, and upgrade your launchpad!
It’s not rocket science to figure out how to play, but it definitely is a lot of fun!
Liftoff features tons of rockets, ranging from old NASA rockets to new SpaceX rockets!
Now, let’s hear from the developers!
What are the biggest challenges you faced while developing Liftoff?
Well, this is a long story. We didn’t run into any technical issues or things we didn’t know how to do - we’d been proficient in Roblox studio for a good while before we started Liftoff. The issues we faced came down to our time management. We were really rushing to get Liftoff out before summer ended (We started late spring) so we skipped a few major aspects of game development; balancing and gameplay. I’ll be the first to say Liftoff doesn’t have great gameplay, but the balancing was more than horrible. The game released with literal arbitrary values for everything, and still has horrible balancing to this day.
The next major setback we faced was a dislike bot. This is probably the biggest setback because of how much it damaged our popularity and motivation to continue the project. It prevented Liftoff from getting on page/genre sorts, which drastically decreased player numbers. It also severely hampered our motivation to continue, and Liftoff is on the backburner now. We’re invested in a better project.
Are you interested in space travel, and rockets in real life?
Surprisingly, no. We’ve never really had an interest in rockets or anything like that. As you can imagine, our community is pretty knowledgeable about that stuff, so they’re often suggesting things or correcting things we’ve never even heard of.
What caused you to start developing? How do you hope to see your development career grow from here?
Me and vastqud have been getting familiar with Roblox Studio for at least 6 years, but we only got really into it in the past 2-3 years. We started developing because we wanted to make games that we would play . At the time on Roblox, for me and vast at least, there was a massive shortage of games. No new games were being made and we weren’t interested in the current one.
Me and vast have tried to make TONS of games that never saw any life. It got to a point where we just wanted something out to have experience with managing and releasing a game, and that’s where Liftoff spawned; a quick project to just have something out.
In the future,we’d love to continue making games on Roblox as a full time job. On top of that, we would also absolutely love our own studio in Portland - not Kentucky! 
What would you say Roblox has done for you and your career, or your life?
Me and vastqud don’t really have careers. We’re currently 16 years old and still in school. Me and vastqud are twin brothers actually, so we communicate pretty well and everything affects us equally. With the money we’ve made from Liftoff, we each bought a laptop to help our productivity. Roblox has certainly been a big part of our life. We’ve been playing it since we were 7!
Do you have any further plans with Liftoff?
Anything to do with Liftoff is up in the air and very uncertain. We have no plans for a big update or even any smaller future updates. We have a small 1 million visits update in the works, but that’s as far as Liftoff goes for now.
Depending on the success of our next project, we would love to make Liftoff 2. We have tons of very cool ideas we think would be great for Roblox, and if you ask us, a Liftoff 2 would legitimately be the best game on Roblox. This isn’t to say Liftoff 2 is 100% confirmed, but it’s definitely something we’re considering.
I noticed you guys were developing a game called Arctica, will this affect Liftoff in any way?
Arctica is the “next project” I’ve been referencing. This will not affect Liftoff in any way. Liftoff was put on the chopping block months ago, before we got our huge surge of popularity in late March. All of our efforts have been put towards Arctica, and I’d encourage anyone reading this to stick around and see what it brings!
Thanks so much to vastqud and rolbloxguy1876 for helping show the Roblox community what it takes to create a game like this, and the behind the scenes look at it.
Be sure to check out Light Works and Liftoff!
Also be sure to check out Arctica, Light Works’ next big project! They post frequent updates and pictures about it in their Discord and on their Twitter!
rolbloxguy1876
vastqud