Interview: Roville
Background
RoVille is an open-world multiplayer life simulation game where players can work one of many jobs, build their dream home and socialize with other players! Roville was developed by Spookrypted and Swootch. It is currently in beta and is paid access. We sat down with Spookrypted and Swootch to ask them some questions about their game and being a Roblox developer.
The Interview
- What made you guys become a Roblox Developer?
Spookrypted: I’ve always been in love with creating games, even before I started making games on Roblox. By the age of 13, I knew the basics of a few programming languages, so I decided to give Roblox Studio a shot and learn Lua. I immediately fell in love with the simplicity and flexibility of the game engine.
Swootch: In early 2018, I felt like I wanted to try something fresh in Roblox. I was tired of only playing games and felt like I wanted to do something more productive. I started by helping my friend (Enqrypted) with small models and I focused on gradually improving myself in building. By helping Enqrypted I noticed that I was improving. I just continued doing what made me happy.
2. What’s your favourite part about being a Developer?
Spookrypted: Being a Developer gives you the freedom to let your creativity flow and create whatever you can think of. It is a great learning experience to improve whatever it is that you love doing, whether that is scripting, building, designing, etc.
Swootch: The favourite part about being a Developer is that you can create whatever you want. There’s so much room for improvement as a Developer. It’s amazing how far practice and determination can take you. You can achieve something which you didn’t think you could do. If you love creating stuff then you will surely improve no matter what.
3. What keeps you motivated as a Developer?
Spookrypted: Knowing that you can create anything you want and the only boundary is yourself. Having a solid player base for your games really makes a huge difference even if the game isn’t wildly successful.
Swootch: I feel like as long as you enjoy making and creating stuff then you are bound to be motivated to create something which your audience will like. The more you do something, the more you improve. If you feel like you are improving then it will motivate you to get better and develop stuff even more.
4. What’s your favourite memory on Roblox?
Spookrypted: My favorite memory on Roblox is the time when one of my games (Jetpack simulator) hit the front page, with over 40k concurrent players. It is a very surreal feeling and is incredibly motivating as a developer. I will never forget how much I had learned from the success of that game.
Swootch: I’m not sure if I have a specific favourite memory on Roblox but if I had to pick one then it would be the first time I DevEx’d. I am grateful that I found an amazing platform like Roblox which has influenced my life.
5. Did you foresee Roville becoming as popular as it has become?
Spookrypted and Swootch: RoVille is still in a very early stage and a lot has to be improved before the game is ready for a full release. At the moment, RoVille has a very small player-base but also a very solid one. We knew that the game wasn’t going to immediately take off because of the fact that many aspects of the game are unfinished, but we hope that once the game is ready, it will steadily increase in its success. We think a big selling point of the game is the in-game marketplace where players can buy and sell houses they built.
6. How did you get the idea for Roville?
Spookrypted and Swootch: We’ve always loved Open-World games on Roblox. In fact, our favorite game on Roblox back when I joined was “Robloxity” which was a massive open-world game at the time. Apart from that, The Sims was also a huge inspiration for the game and its style.
7. What are your favourite Roblox games?
Spookrypted: I don’t play as much on Roblox as I used to, mostly I just work on my own games, but when I do play, I enjoy shooter games like Arsenal and Story-driven adventure games like “Camping” and “Road trip”.
Swootch: When I was new to Roblox, I enjoyed playing Work at Pizza Place. It was a fun game where I found a lot of amazing friends before I knew Discord existed. It was also the game where I first met Enqrypted. Back then he wasn’t a developer. I also liked Pokemon Brick Bronze a lot before it got taken down. I do enjoy the new version which is Loomian Legacy.
8. Any mistakes/hiccups you have made so far, something you would advise a new developer to avoid?
Spookrypted: The biggest mistake you can make as a developer is letting failures discourage you. If your game doesn’t do as expected, that’s completely normal! No one succeeds on their first attempts. I’ve had multiple games fail, but I’ve also had very successful games because I didn’t let the failures distract me from doing what I love.
Swootch: I haven’t made any significant mistake but I’d like to point out that you should keep in touch with your loyal friends who have supported you throughout. It’s nice to have a friendly environment who support you even in those hard times you might experience.
9. Do you have any future plans as a Developer?
Spookrypted: I will continue making games for as long as I can. It is my favorite thing to do, and the fact that I earn money doing it is a huge plus.
Swootch: I don’t know what the future holds for me but I want to keep on improving and doing what I enjoy. Currently I’m learning Blender (3D Modeling Software) and I’d like to master it one day.
10. What are some updates that you have planned for Roville?
Spookrypted and Swootch: The main focus right now is to finish the main features of the game (promotions, refined car mechanics, etc) and iron out the main issues and bugs in the game. The main reason we opened the game for beta testing is so that players can help us in finding critical issues that should be fixed. Apart from that, mobile and console support is an important step on my to-do list. We want the game to support as many devices as possible. Once all that is out of the way, we will go forward by adding more content to the game such as more jobs and furniture as well as more flexibility to the building system.
Conclusion
We thank the lead developers of Roville for sitting down with us and doing our interview. We can’t wait for the future of Roville and to cover it in a game review.
Play the game: https://www.roblox.com/games/2546155523/RoVille-BETA?refPageId=7075a7b8-6cf3-4cc3-95a8-d2ec85ce2b5a
(Note the game is currently in Beta.)
Follow us on our social media pages for more content like this!
Follow us on Twitter! https://twitter.com/RobloxRadarRBX
Join our Discord! https://discord.gg/gf7vjGy
