Gravity Gauntlet on Roblox

In fact, the majority of them only scratch the surface of Roblox Studio’s capabilities. 

For the uninitiated (or those who don’t have tweens at home) Roblox is the online game platform where users can program their own games and play games created by other users. Over 214.10 million users play on Roblox every month, with over 9.5 million developers. Over half the Roblox user base is over 13, and 38% are over the age of 17. But the fastest-growing demo on Roblox is 18- to 24-year-olds.

The democratization of game-building and storytelling is sort of Roblox’s whole deal, but as the platform ages up and continues to gain new users, we saw an opportunity to help lead the charge toward better user-generated content. To level up, if you will.

Admittedly, we have an unfair advantage over the majority of people who are making and playing games on Roblox. Between the 3D designers, coders, emerging and immersive tech specialists, not to mention the combined thousands of hours of gameplay experience between us, we couldn’t not do what we do best—go hard.

We asked ourselves: 

After launching Above Par-adowski in late 2022 and The Escape Artist shortly after, Paradowski’s emerging tech team turned their sights on the Roblox platform with Gravity Gauntlet, a nostalgic space obstacle course (AKA “obby”) straight out of a 1991 Game Informer article.

With Roblox entering the VR space, the new Meta Quest 3 launching before the 2023 holiday season, and Apple’s VR headset coming out next year, we knew this was the perfect time to add to the growing library of PC-original experiences. 

The music, “ScrapHeap Sundays” from Ben Wade of Guidebook, is an original 80s sci-fi theme scored specifically for the game, inspired by the key art.

Gravity Gauntlet’s non-playable character (NPC), “The Trainer,” started as a pencil sketch and quickly morphed into a fully functioning 3D character, thanks to Stable Diffusion. Eleven Labs helped bring The Trainer’s script to life, creating a voice that sounded as if Adele was cast in Bladerunner. 

Even the pieces of gear players earn by collecting scrap in the game are original creations that can be used to customize avatars, which aside from the obbys themselves, is much like a game of its own.

When you fall off the space station above the planet Detritus and respawn, you get a completely new experience. That’s because the game is generative, with every level a different layout of obstacles. The only constant? The gravity generator that’s perpetually on the fritz and the grapple tool that makes players feel like Spider-Man.

Building this game brought out the best in us—everyone’s inner child came alive as we created something inspired by the corners of our collective memories. But even better was the feeling of pushing the limits of exceptional experiences with zero gatekeeping. Just creating and sharing for the love of it.