Kluge Interactive’s Aims for More UGC Platforms with Our First Roblox Game, BeatBlocks

Our newest game, BeatBlocks, started as a simple test: Could we make something unique for Roblox that spoke to what we love here at Kluge Interactive? Truth is, the team here can’t stop playing our first game inside of Roblox that pits the DJ versus the dancers. 

A DJ hurtles obstacles across the dance floor while everyone else has to dance to survive! Today we’re talking a little bit about the design journey that got us to this point and what that means for what’s next from Kluge Interactive.

THE ORIGIN OF BEATBLOCKS

The idea for BeatBlocks was born out of the DNA of Kluge as a studio. After all, our roots go back to a music magazine and we solidified our love for music games with Synth Riders. One other thing that BeatBlocks has in common with Synth Riders: Both started as experiments. 

“We’ve been excited to bring a music-based game to a different audience and platform, and Roblox was the perfect place for us,” says Lead Producer Lena Lane. “We’ve had a lot of help understanding the platform from our intern last summer, Andrew, to Oscar, our incredible Roblox consultant, and Chris Oberst, our narrative designer and former Roblox team member.” 

According to Lena, “When we played the prototype with a small group and found ourselves laughing and wanting to play again, we knew we had something fun here with the earliest versions of BeatBlocks.” 

While we’ve done a LOT with Meta since 2021 – over 15 games (including Giant Paddle Mini Golf) and created the Horizon World for Meta Connect the last two years – this was an amazing learning opportunity for us!

Lena explains, “this is a new engine, so we were learning best practices and all the fun idiosyncrasies of submitting items to the marketplace and launching a game. A mobile-first approach rather than VR-first also means that we’re challenged to look at mechanics and player experience in a new way.” 

While the game is live now and you can play it here, we’re continuing to learn from the Roblox community. And, if we’re being honest, we’re having a blast playing alongside the Roblox community – and some of them are already REALLY good! 

Given that we’ve had so much experience already within Horizon Worlds, Lena and her team had to adjust since Roblox is built around UGC for a mobile audience.

“Quick iteration cycles, easy-to-use studio tools, and customizable monetization options makes it a great place to test out content and see if it sticks with the Teen and Young Adult audience,” Lena adds. “There are a lot of options on Roblox, so it’s a brutal crucible of ideas! On Horizon Worlds, we have worked mostly as a second-party studio, building worlds that Meta publishes and building out templates for the creator community. Although Meta also created a toolkit for quick iteration, their toolkit is based on building for VR.”

WHAT WORKING ON META HORIZON TAUGHT US

We have been learning a lot about creator platforms over the last three years thanks to our work in Horizon Worlds. The most important lesson: Social games make everything more fun and we love using them to connect people, playing together in a positive way! While this space is still relatively nascent, it continues being an increasing role in gaming’s future. 

We love to innovate and explore games in emerging technologies and platforms. We think that although Roblox has been around for a while, it’s at an inflection point where brands and larger studios are going to start thinking of how to take the platform to another level, and make more original and highly produced games that resonate with the Roblox community.

So where will this take the Kluge Team in the future? I’m glad you asked!

• We are in the middle of producing a game in UEFN – another creator platform we believe we should be in! It’s a little too soon to talk about it, but we’ll see a Kluge game in Fortnite in 2025.
• We have also been experimenting with other technologies like BCI and thinking a lot about MR and AR first experiences. There is so much potential in all of these! 
• We started in Mobile VR, and then on to PCVR, and then cordless VR, hand tracking, and MR. Now our sights are on exploring the role of AI, glasses, and AR. 
• We also explore the social potential of these spatial 3D-based technologies through creator platforms that extend to existing 2D devices. 

Those bulletpoints right here? They’re all interconnected – and we’re uniquely positioned to craft more great games out of the foundations we’re building now. These are games that can be social and optimized for XR, but can also extend their reach to a 2D use case that supports the 3D future of the Internet! 

As for BeatBlocks? We’ll see you online!

Stay tuned because 2025 is going to be exciting for us!