Other Building Games - Master Builder 3.0 Advanced - page 109

Roblox
roblox.com
How it's like Minecraft: A voxel-building game with a heavy focus on multiplayer, though
without the world generation features. More focused on creating levels and mini-games to
play, there is no survival mode.
Roblox is unique in a few ways, the primary of which are that it's totally free and that it's
aimed at kids between 8 and 18. The idea of Roblox is that you take control of an avatar in
a voxel world and explore and play in creations made by yourself and others. Unlike Mine-
craft, there's no set survival or “vanilla” type mode; worlds are created from the ground up
and then are shared on the primary Roblox website by users.
Another difference between Minecraft and Roblox is that you design worlds in Roblox using
an editor, much like MCEdit or one of the other out of game editors available for Minecraft.
There is construction in the game itself, if the world is set up to do so, but it's more about
creating a scenario to play in than it is about warping a world as you play.
A shot of the Roblox builder, with which players can create just about any scenario they can think up.
Roblox also offers a lot more options in terms of how you can create, with “bricks” of many
different sizes, customizable character body models and a pretty huge amount of readymade
items to include in your worlds. There's even a “lightweight” programming language, Lua,
that players can use to script events and further customize the worlds that they build. It's
pretty heady to start off with, but being designed for kids, Roblox is set up to teach you how
to use itself. In fact, it's a pretty excellent tool for getting kids interested in coding, and a fun
way to learn real-world applicable skills.
Roblox is all about community, with the aforementioned website being the hub of most activ-
ity in the game. It also includes a static currency, giving players incentive to travel to differ-
ent worlds and complete activities, all of which feed back into their ability to do more with
their own worlds and characters.