Game design overview
How to design Roblox games for kids that are fun, low friction and monetized ethically.
3 min read
How to design Roblox games for kids that are fun, low friction and monetized ethically. Distilled from shipping several Roblox games with an AI coding agent, mainly a kids' strategy tycoon, plus idle, RNG and RPG projects. The specific games appear only as short worked examples.
Contents
| Page | What it covers |
|---|---|
| design-checklist.md | Start here. The release checklist, one line per rule, linked to the reasons. |
| onboarding.md | Tutorial shape, pointers, auto-advance, no soft-locks, the unlosable first fight, waiting steps, low-cash tip, intro and loading screen. |
| tutorial-template.md | A fill-in step table, per-step and whole-tutorial checklists, and a test plan. |
| first-10-minutes-audit.md | How to audit a kid's first 10 minutes: decisions, numbers, menus, waits, Robux prompts. |
| progression-and-pacing.md | Next-goal pill, gate goods vs auto-sell, sims (and why they're optimistic), upgrades vs copies, prestige, daily and tier-up rewards, soft-lock sweeps. |
| combat-feel.md | Endings that don't drag, vehicle slots, natural infantry, Easy / Close / Hard, losing that feels OK. |
| monetization-and-compliance.md | No auto-prompts, quiet period, double-purchase guard, paid random items and PolicyService, like rewards, grandfathering, starting currency. |
| analytics.md | Onboarding funnel, session funnel, custom events, client validation, renumbering safely. |
| process.md | Playtester feedback loops, 15 parallel reviewers merged into a ranked list, fix agents, prepare-then-apply. |
| review-areas.md | The 15 review areas and what each reviewer looks for. |
Snippets
| File | What it is |
|---|---|
| snippets/tutorial_steps.luau | Server tutorial step machine: early actions count, absolute goals, go-back rules, pay-once rewards, resume, skip. |
| snippets/onboarding_funnel.luau | Monotonic onboarding funnel with fill-in, legacy freeze, validated client steps, session funnel, Studio dry run. |
| snippets/purchase_guard.luau | Client "Delivering…" state plus server intent window, duplicate compensation and safe credits. |
| snippets/paid_random_policy.luau | ArePaidRandomItemsRestricted gate with retry, weighted roll with pity, odds from the same table. |
| snippets/battle_pace.luau | Pace scale, mop-up trigger, surrender, overtime. |
| snippets/upgrade_vs_copy.py | Prints cost per output for upgrades vs copies and warns when copies win. |
| snippets/softlock_sweep.py | Many-seed reachability sweep; the toy map reproduces a real "leftover ring" soft-lock and its fix. |
The .luau snippets pass luau-analyze apart from Roblox globals. The Python scripts run with plain python3.
The ten lessons that mattered most
- The tutorial is the core loop, nothing else. 10 steps became 6; each ≤ 8 words, one pointer on the exact button, auto-advance with a reward.
- Write tutorial rules on the server so they can't soft-lock: count early actions, absolute goals, go back after a loss, resume on rejoin.
- The first fight can't be lost, and that has to be re-tested after every combat change; a balance tweak once made it "Hard ~2%".
- No Robux prompt ever opens by itself. A partial "+5" purchase once trained the units and opened a prompt.
- Lock Buy until the grant lands.
PromptProductPurchaseFinishedfires beforeProcessReceipt, and a kid paid twice. - Check
ArePaidRandomItemsRestrictedon the server in every path, treat a failed lookup as restricted, and retry. - Sims time your milestones but flatter you. Mirror real constraints and feed them measured fight results.
- Run a soft-lock sweep on hundreds of seeds. A 300-seed sim found a progression wall nobody hit in playtests.
- Upgrades must pay like copies. 223× the cost for 5.5× the output turned the map into clutter.
- Fights end fast: mop-up, surrender, a clock that speeds up, and Easy / Close / Hard instead of numbers.