Indie Developer Polyhex Creates Super Bomb Survival for Roblox on Xbox One
When 14-year-old Polyhex began developing a trilogy of adventure games on Roblox (a series that was aptly named Roblox Adventure), little did he know his passion projects would ultimately mature into a full-blown career nine years later. The now 23-year-old developer says he was first inspired to start designing games on Roblox after seeing what kinds of imaginative, physics-based experiences young teenagers like him were already building on the platform. Today, he’s best known as the creator of the smash-hit game Super Bomb Survival, which is now available as a featured title on Roblox for Xbox One!
Super Bomb Survival takes a quirky premise and ratchets the dial up to 11. Like the name suggests, you and a group of players are dropped into one of several vibrant levels and must survive a cartoonish onslaught of bombs, missiles, and dynamite raining down upon your heads. The coolest part is that the environment around you evolves over time. Buildings are destroyed indiscriminately. Debris gets hurled through the air. The ground beneath your feet is obliterated until it reveals layers upon layers of different terrain before finally descending into a pit of lava. If you want to win, you’ll need to move swiftly to make it to safety or use your special abilities to escape from impending doom. Survive the round, and you’ll be rewarded with in-game currency that can be spent on additional skills or perks. It’s crazy fun and super addicting to play!
“Super Bomb Survival came from my love of physics-based destruction in video games and other bomb survival mini-games,” said Polyhex. “I think the appeal is simple—it’s fun to be right there in the den of chaos while everything around you is being blasted away in a video game.”
When Roblox’s Developer Exchange (DevEx) program was announced in 2013, Polyhex took his game development hobby to the next level. He started development on Super Bomb Survival in 2014—a genre departure from his adventure game trilogy in earlier years. DevEx meant he could now be paid simply for creating great games that everyone can enjoy. But if you ask him, the reward was an added bonus. He just wants to express his creativity to its fullest potential.
“[DevEx] gave me an enormous boost of motivation! It’s so cool that my teen hobby became an actual paying job,” he explained. “Life has so many wacky twists and turns and game development is where I feel right at home, especially on Roblox.”
Shortly after Super Bomb Survival made its debut appearance on PC in 2014, Polyhex got to work porting the experience over to Xbox One: “When creating for PC, you have the benefit of a mouse, which makes in-game UI like shops and menus easier to create,” he said. “When I moved over to Xbox, I had to redo a lot of systems for these things. It got me to think outside the box, so to speak, and I learned a lot about designing for controllers!”
He then took the initiative to broaden his game development skills as an intern at Roblox’s headquarters this past Summer. He learned 3D modeling there, and now he uses those skills to continually add new types of bombs to the game—all of which need their own look, sounds, and special effects to help them stand out from the others and make what they do obvious to newer players. If you’re an aspiring game developer just getting started on the Roblox platform like Polyhex nine years ago, take notes from the expert himself.
“It can be hard to get started. Sometimes, it can be even harder to continue something you’ve been working on for a long time. The best advice I think I have is this: do something every day. Even if it’s a tiny change or update, push yourself to create or change something in your game at least once a day. Those little things add up, and eventually you’ll find yourself having an easier time creating medium-difficulty projects, and eventually you’ll be able to tackle anything.”
Thanks to Polyhex’s constant efforts and hard work, Super Bomb Survival has been played over 33 million times and consistently ranks as one of Roblox’s highest rated games among players. When asked if he had anything else to say to the Roblox Xbox community, he said, “You guys rule. See you in game!”
Invite your friends and join the madness by playing Super Bomb Survival and other free games on Roblox for Xbox One today! If you’re curious about developing your own games and experiences on Roblox, check out this page for more information.