Roblox is a comprehensive virtual platform where you can not only play a multitude of user-generated games across different genres but create one of your own. The platform follows a free-to-play model, meaning users can play these games without any initial fee. However, optional in-game purchases (including one-time transactions and microtransactions) can be obtained via “Robux,” an in-game virtual currency.
Roblox was officially launched in 2006, two years after the release of its initial beta version. Since its launch, the platform has spent most of its time in obscurity. It’s only in the last couple of years or so that it has gained recognition, especially among preteens and teenagers.
According to the Economist, the total hours of user engagement on the platform reached a record high of 3 billion hours at the end of the second fiscal quarter in 2020. Based on RTrack estimates, Roblox monthly active users have jumped from 113 million in December 2019 to 164 million in July 2020, a 45 percent increase.
Even though Roblox’s popularity is on the rise, with new users pouring in on a daily basis, there is more than one reason for users to look for alternatives. Below is our list of games like Roblox that offer the same level of sophistication and freedom to express your creativity.
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11. Space Engineers
Features: Voxel-based, sandbox
Platform(s): Windows, Xbox One
Price: $44.99 for Ultimate Edition | $19.99 for Vanilla Game
Space Engineers is an indie simulation game that revolves around mining/gathering resources and constructing various items on and around the planets, asteroids, and stars in outer space.
Here, you take the role of an astronaut or ‘Space Engineer’ and are tasked with building spaceships. To do so, you need resources and various components that can be mined from asteroids or harvested by capturing rogue cargo ships.
It’s quite astonishing that you can build a small working spaceship within a minute by drag-and-dropping armor blocks, reactors, thrusters, gyroscope, a cockpit, and landing gear into a mix. Large spaceships, inside which you can walk around and accommodate facilities, such as medical rooms and refineries, can also be built. However, they require more resources and time.
The game can be played in creative and survival modes. In creative mode, players can freely build tools and spaceships with unlimited resources at their disposal. You can also alter how planets and asteroids will appear.
To begin with, you must first select an existing game-world with a set of predefined settings. Or you can create a more customized world with advanced options that allow you to alter elements such as the size of player’s inventory, the speeds at which machines will operate, the overall appearance of worlds, and, importantly, whether or not procedural generation should be used.
10. Planet Coaster
Features: Simulation, construction
Platform(s): Windows, macOS, Xbox One, PS4 and 5
Price: $44.99 | Additional content starting at $1.79
If you’re interested in a voxel-based management simulation game, you’re likely to have fun playing Planet Coaster. The game’s objective is to design and create spectacular coaster theme parks and manage them to customer(s) satisfaction.
Be it piece-by-piece construction, with which players can customize every aspect of their theme park, or Landscape Sculpting, which allows terrain modification. The game has everything that makes it more engaging than your average construction and management simulation game.
Planet Coaster can be played in three modes; Career, Sandbox, and Challenge. In Career Mode, players must oversee theme parks and take over important tasks such as hiring new staff and expanding your existing theme park. The Sandbox mode allows you to play the game at your own pace without much difficulty. Challenge mode is almost the same as Sandbox mode but with an extra challenge.
That’s not all. Theme parks and coasters that you create can be shared with your friends through the “global village” mechanism.
9. Dual Universe
Features: Sandbox, space simulation, MMORPG, voxel-based
Platform: Windows
Price: $9 per month
Dual Universe is an upcoming (currently in Beta) space simulation and massively multiplayer online game in which players share a single continuous universe with randomly generated planets. The game, as described by the developer, is entirely driven by the players.
It allows you to build just about everything from residential buildings, factories, warships, and flying cars to underground bunkers and giant space stations. Players can also manipulate their world’s terrain if they wish to do so.
Dual Universe puts more emphasis on economic and political aspects. As part of a single persistent universe, players can cooperate and form military alliances and become trade partners. Overall, the game revolves around mining, crafting, exploration, trade, and warfare. Here, you can be anything from a wealthy trader and industrialist to a simple cargo hauler or a space pirate. It’s quite promising.
But that’s not all. The game also has an appealing backstory. In short, it tells us how humanity was able to escape from an impending doom on Earth and flee to the distant parts of the galaxy.
What’s more intriguing is that the game is being developed by Novaquark, a startup game studio founded by Jean-Christophe Baillie, a well-known figure in robotics and AI.
8. KoGaMa
Platform(s): Browser-based, Windows, Android
Price: Free-to-Play | In-game purchases
KoGaMa, in essence, is not a game, rather a platform where users can create games and play those developed by others, just like Roblox. The games are free-to-play, but you do have optional in-game purchases that can be made using Gold Cubes, KoGaMa’s in-game currency.
The games on KoGaMa can be detailed and have levels. Users can also create 3D avatars and addon ‘models.’ These avatars and models are purchased (and sold) on a marketplace. The games can be played in single-player and multiplayer modes.
While KoGaMa allows anyone to play games on its platform without registering, its chat system can only be used by registered users.
7. Garry’s Mod
Features: Sandbox
Platform(s): Windows, macOS, Linux
Price: $9.99
What would you do if given the power to spawn objects randomly out of thin air, manipulate them to create diverse objects, and use those objects in weird ways? You can find it yourself with the physics sandbox game, Garry’s Mod. It allows players to do all those things and much more.
In the base game, the player starts with a set of ‘tools’ without any predefined objectives and goals. By tools, I mean a unique gin that can pick up, freeze or manipulate NPCs and other in-game elements. There is an endless possibility of the things that you can create. The game can be played offline in single-player mode or with friends in multiplayer mode.
Garry’s Mod allows users to modify and make changes in the game by developing scripts (addons) that are installed separately. Some of the most notable user-created game mods include DarkRP, Spacebuild, Trouble in Terrorist Town, and Wiremod.
In Trouble In Terrorist Town game mod, you can be a detective trying to identify homicide suspects among innocents. In some cases, game mods require to own other games for it to work.
6. CastleMiner Z
Features: Blocky-design, survival
Platform: Windows
Price: $3.99
Next on this list is CastleMiner Z, a co-op survival horror game set in a Minecraft-inspired block-based world. The game allows players to explore its deep and nearly infinite world, mine resources, craft weapons, and fight enemies, such as demons, zombie hordes, and dragons, with their friends.
The game is built on the success of its predecessor, CastleMiner, wherein players start the game with a bulk of resources used to build various structures. In CastleMiner Z, rather than starting with resources, players are required to mine them from the start. In introduced new (craftable) weapons and enemies to the gameplay. A maximum of 8 players can join in co-op gameplay.
The game has four modes; Endurance, Survival, Creative, and Dragon survival mode. In Endurance mode, the never-ending hordes of zombies, dragons, and other enemies will test how long you can stay alive before finally succumbing. Survival mode is almost the same, but with the addition of defenses and other structures. The creative mode offer players the freedom to craft and build without worrying about enemies.
If you’re looking for a fun yet intense game to play with your pals, other than Roblox, then CastleMiner Z could become your thing. The game has been commercially successful as well, selling more than one million copies on Xbox within just ten months after its release. It was the first indie game to do so.
5. Lego Worlds
Features: Sandbox, 3D procedurally generated world
Platform(s): Windows, Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch
Price: $29.99
Lego Worlds is a popular sandbox game that allows players to create structures out of Lego bricks in a 3D procedurally generated world. Set in an open world environment, Lego Worlds is about exploring and creating.
From your character’s outfits and overall appearance to terrain, everything can be altered in the game. To create their worlds, players can either use predefined structures or build them brick-by-brick. The game features motorcycles, cars, helicopters, dragons, and tons of other components that enhance your gameplay.
Moreover, the game has a reward system in place that allows players to receive in-game currency or ‘studs’ in exchange for unique objects scattered randomly throughout the map.
4. Trove
Features: MMO, sandbox
Platform(s): Windows, PS4, Xbox One
Price: Free-to-play | Additional content from $4.99 to $29.99
If you’re looking for a Roblox-like game with intense action-adventure flavor, then Trove is for you. A sandbox MMORPG, Trove allows players to fight monsters, plunder treasures, and build structures as a team.
The game consists of multiple Worlds (grouped into realms), which players can explore. However, some of these worlds are more adventurous than others. There is also a testbed world, known as Meta Forge, in which players can test their own creations.
To begin with, players first need to choose between fifteen possible character classes, each having its own strengths and weakness. You can choose to play as a barbarian, a knight, a gunslinger, or a pirate captain and equip your character with suitable weapons and gear.
Trove has an expansive crafting mechanism that allows players to create a wide range of items from gear, swords, and other weapons to dragons and other elements.
3. Terasology
Features: Open-source, voxel-based
Platform: Cross-platform
Price: Free
Terasology is a voxel-based open-source game that draws inspiration from the early success of Minecraft while also featuring elements from other genres. Terasology is more of a game-creating platform, like Roblox, rather than just a game.
The game follows a modular design, meaning contents are added via different modules. You can change, enable, or disable these modules to obtain desirable game settings. It gives players greater flexibility to modify basic in-game elements such as inhabitants or creatures, texture packs, combat mechanisms, and currency.
Though the game is still in the process of adding new elements, it’s expansive enough to be entertaining and has a unique gaming experience.
2. Terraria
Features: Sandbox, 2D world
Platform(s): Windows, macOS, Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, Android
Price: $9.99 | Extras including official soundtrack at additional $9.98
At first, Terraria may feel nothing more than a 2D Minecraft clone with identical gameplay and lots of similar ideas. Although that’s essentially the case, the game does have its unique buffs and features that make it stand apart.
What I like the most about Terraria is its depth. There are many more things for you to interact with, items to collect and build, and monsters to slash. Players start the game with a few tools necessary to explore the terrain in a randomly generated world. The game lacks proper tutorials and pointers, which can be a little puzzling at first. However, it doesn’t take long to get the gist of the game’s mechanics through clips and Wiki page.
A large portion of Terraria’s gameplay is about exploring and gathering items and crafting various equipment out of them. The most basic resources, such as furniture, torches, and wooden swords, can be found while exploring the surface, where you can build shelter houses and even develop an entire settlement.
However, for rare items, you need to dig deep into the dark caverns where things get dicey. While looking for rare materials for your new weapon, you can run into nasty creatures, from gigantic worms to monsters and beasts. To fight enemies, you can use a wide variety of weapons, from bow and arrows, swords and guns, to laser pointers, magical boomerang, and spells.
Terraria’s retro 2D terrain and a comprehensive tool or weapons crafting system is not only addictive but also make the game on par with other sandbox action-adventure titles.
Read: 15 Best FPS Games For All Platforms
1. Minecraft
Features: Sandbox, open-world gameplay, survival
Platform(s): Windows, OS X, Linux
Price: Starter pack costs $29.99 | Master Pack costs $49.99
Minecraft is, by far, the most popular sandbox game ever created. Its blocky, 3D experience has been an endless source of entertainment for millions of gamers worldwide. In Minecraft, players explore a nearly infinite, randomly-generated 3D world, in which they may mine resources, craft tools, and weapons, build structures, and battle hostile creatures.
As a sandbox, Minecraft doesn’t have any specific goals; thus, players are free to play however they want. You can either be aggressive and hunt monsters in the darkest and scariest places or build defenses to simply fend of those creatures at night.
Read: 18 Best Nintendo Switch Games You Should Play
Minecraft has multiple game modes, each with slightly different mechanics. For example, in Hardcore mode, players start the game with the hardest settings and default permadeath. Its expansive and rather complex crafting system makes the gameplay more engaging.
