picnic time for teddy bears

reading time – 2 minutes

This is the first post in our series following the development of a Roblox experience about a hungry teddy bear and his minions. Roblox Studio is used for level creation, and Visual Studio Code is used to manage our code base. We’ll be using Blender to create our assets.

Before we jump in, you should know that this is a developer journal charting the progress of a game from asset creation through to release. We’ll occasionally dive deep where there are interesting areas. Generally though, this is a high-level overview covering the key steps in creating a Roblox experience. You can check out the whole series here.

In early 2023, we ran a contest at a primary/junior school careers day. We gave the children an overview of some of the many jobs available in the gaming industry. We showed them how they could develop their existing talents, skills, and hobbies into an exciting and fun careers. The kids saw Blender and Roblox Studio in action while we talked about games they’d be excited to play.

We asked the children to develop ideas for a Roblox experience that we’d adapt and build. There were dozens of fantastic entries, with many ideas for chase and survival games. The winning design gave us “a ‘cute’ little floating bear… head” as our antagonist. This seemed like such an atypical central character that we decided to run with it. The bear’s name is Etaló.

Without giving too much away at this point, you should expect to see the following:

• A floating teddy bear head who loves counting piles of food
• Tiny teddy bears chase the players around each level to steal their food
• Defeat Etaló on each level by solving times table challenges scattered throughout the map
• Players can trade their collected food for tools to give them the upper hand

why roblox for a teddy bear game?

Roblox is a popular platform worldwide, particularly for the 7-13-year-old age group. Much content is free (like our teddy bear experience), and anyone with access to a computer can be a Creator. Anyone with a phone or tablet can play the games and hang out with real-world friends. Roblox can be used to get kids interested in game design. Building an Obby (obstacle course) requires almost no code and makes a great jumping-on point for kids who have already mastered other platforms like Scratch and want a new challenge.

We’re excited to build this Roblox experience about a teddy bear designed by kids passionate about gaming!

Find the links below to follow us on social media and be among the first to see our next progress update.