Roblox Tips for Parents
As a mum of two kids (4 and 7) who LOVE Roblox, when they ask friends to join them, I’m sometimes asked “where do we start?” by their parents, so in this article I’ll try to answer that question! I’ve searched around a bit online and the only advice for parents seems to be along the online safety theme, not what we actually do now we’re here!
Note: these are my experiences and I’m sure not fully comprehensive, there are so many games out there it would be impossible to introduce you to them all!
First things first
Signing up! Roblox is FREE to play, sign up here: roblox.com
Roblox advises you to make sure your name has nothing to do with your real name, so pick something random but memorable. Usernames cannot be changed once they’re set up, unless you want to pay about £10 to do so, so choose wisely.
My advice: make sure your child doesn’t know their own password. It might be a bit inconvenient (“Muuuuuuuum, I need to log in…”), but normally your web browser/device keeps you logged in until you choose to log out. There are some scam games out there which ask players to log in again to play, but this is the scam. Once these games know your username and password, they’ll take all of your Robux (optional in-game currency bought with real money, explained below) and possibly lock you out of your own account. If the kid’s don’t know their password, they can’t be scammed. Smart!
Robux
Roblox is free to play, but it has it’s own currency called Robux. Robux can be used to buy things for your avatar, like hair or clothes, but there are always free alternatives. Some games choose to charge entry, for example Welcome to Bloxburg is currently 25 Robux to unlock. Most games are free to play and have an option to pay Robux to either collect things faster, buy better pets, or skip levels. It is possible to play Roblox and never spend a penny — I have! The kids, not so much, they’ve chosen to spend their pocket money on it a few times here and there. You can buy Robux from the Roblox website only. A rough conversion rate is 1 Robux = 1p.
Staying safe
There are lots of Roblox parental safety articles out there, just do an online search for them. One thing I’d reiterate from them is THERE ARE NO FREE ROBUX EVER, drill that into your children from the start. Any game, app or website promising them is a scam.
I’ve also taught my children to only accept friend requests from people they know in real life, if they don’t know who it is, they are well trained to decline the request! Once you’re friends you can private message and see what games each of you are playing. I feel that keeping your Roblox friends true to your ‘real life’ friends is safest, but that’s just my preference, it does mean they don’t get to make friends with other kids around the world, so you might choose otherwise.
What to play
So, you’ve signed up, given a safety lesson about Robux and friends, now what? Time to play!
On your Roblox home screen you’ll see your avatar, which you can customise, a list of your friends and what they’re playing, and lists of games: games you’ve played before, games Roblox recommends for you and your favourite games. Along the top is a search bar allowing you to search for games and more.
What games to pick though? Alongside regular games like Roblox-giant Adopt Me, there are a number of recurring styles of games, this is what I’ve learned:
- Tycoons: these are games where you collect money. You normally use this money to buy more ‘droppers’, which in turn give you more money, faster. This enables you to then build a pre-set building or structure. See Airport Tycoon where you can end up building a whole airport.
- Simulators: these are games where you collect a number of items, then sell them to level up. You usually then upgrade your capacity to collect the items faster and move onto bigger and better items. See Ice Cream Van Simulator where you buy and sell bigger and better ice creams to level up your ice cream vehicle!
- Obbys: these are obstacle courses, try and get to the end! It would be rude of me not to plug my daughter’s obby here, if you like you can check out Easiest Obby Ever — it’s actually quite a good introduction to obbys and there’s no in-game purchases available. A really popular obby-style game is Tower of Hell, it is quite difficult though!
There are so many user-created games in Roblox, you can literally type “[anything] tycoon/simulator/obby” in the Roblox search bar (make sure “search in Games” is selected) and there will be something there to try out. So, how do you know what’s good? When you search, Roblox will show you the name, user ranking and number of current players playing the game.
In the image above I’ve searched for “unicorn obby” — it’s an easy win, kids love unicorns, of course there are unicorn-based games :) You can make an educated guess at what might be good here: they all have people playing them (look for the person icon), which is a good indication, and the thumbs up icon indicating what previous players have thought about it is useful too. I’d probably pick the first game to try as there are a lot of people playing it right now and 78% thumbs up isn’t bad at all. The second option has a high user rating, but not as many people playing. I’d probably give that a try too as it seems to be a good game, but it just might not be popular right now. The third option seems popular but the user rating is quite low, that could indicate it’s too easy or asks you to pay Robux quite often, I’d probably give it a miss — it also doesn’t have “unicorn” in the name — but I know my kids would “try it just to see”.
Popular games to try
The following list is one I’ve compiled over the last few months of playing Roblox with my kids. I feel like I can communicate better with them if I know the language, and if you can’t beat them you might as well join them! Below, the game titles are the web links directly to the games — beware of copycat games, although by looking at the user ratings and number of current players it should tell you which is the real one.
Adopt Me
THE Roblox game. Adopt Me started as a role-playing game where players could choose whether they were a parent or a baby and parents would look after the babies by dressing them up and feeding them. In 2019 they introduced pets and now this is the main focus of Adopt Me. You have to look after your eggs or pets in order for them to hatch or grow. By looking after them you earn Adopt Me bucks and can buy bigger and better eggs which will hatch into *fingers crossed* the elusive LEGENDARY pets. You can collect four fully grown pets of the same type and combine them to make a NEON pet, and combining four neon pets creates a MEGA NEON pet! Players can also trade items and pets between each other, which helps a lot if you’re looking for four of the same type of pet! I traded two dinosaurs the other day for my fourth albino bat, result!
Tower of Hell
Frustrating as h… well, the aim is to get to the top. In 8 minutes. Don’t fall or you’ll start from the bottom again. It took me SO LONG to get to the top of this one. I also enjoy Treacherous Tower, no 8 minute limit, but one stage changes every 60 seconds, so make sure you’re not on it when it does!
Hide and Seek Extreme
Virtual hide and seek! One person is chosen at random to be “it”, everyone gets about a minute to hide and then “it” is released! If “it” touches you, you’re out and can watch the other hiders and “it” complete the round. Once you’re out it’s a good opportunity to find better hiding places others use! Blox Hunt is another good hide and seek game, where hiders can morph into other objects in the room by clicking on them. Another good one is Freeze Tag — there’s a team of taggers and a team of runners, it’s a big game of tag!
Jump Over The Walls
Easy — jump over the walls, only the walls get bigger and bigger and the only way you can get over them is by working together with other players and jumping off each other. A great game of team working.
Fashion Famous
Each round there’s a theme like “black and white” or “prom”. You go around and dress yourself up to match the theme, then when the time is up there’s a fashion show and you rate each other. Try and get on the podium! Another similar game to this is Pet Show — in this game you dress up and show off your pet instead of yourself!
Build A Boat For Treasure
I’ll admit, I’ve only played this once, but I do enjoy listening to the kids working together on their boat and then launching it to collect the treasure! Another good team working game. It’s easier if the team is talking together over Skype or something though, it would be hard to do over in-game text chat.
Work at a Pizza Place
A nice role playing game in which you can pick a role at a pizza restaurant, whether it be cashier, cook, boxer, supplier or delivery driver, everyone has to work together to make sure orders are taken and fulfilled.
Ice Cream Van Simulator
Buy and sell ice creams (for crazy prices!) and level up your ice cream vehicle with the profit you make, which unlocks more expensive ice creams to sell.
Theme Park Tycoon
Start with a plot of land and choose which rides and amenities to add to your theme park to bring in more visitors. Earn more money to build bigger, better rides.
Restaurant Tycoon 2
Build your own restaurant: serve customers, make food, employ staff, then with the money earned, add to your restaurant furniture and menu to bring in more customers.
What else?
Roblox Studio
As you’ll have probably seen in Roblox there are A LOT of user-created games. If you want to expand your child’s coding knowledge, they could build and publish their own Roblox game! There are a number of tutorials online, I started with this one from codeakid.
YouTube
There are a number of YouTube channels that play Roblox games and might inspire you or your child to find a new game or how to play a game differently. Some channels we watch are:
- Ethan Gamer TV
- Lankybox
- Play Adopt Me (the official Adopt Me channel)
My daughter has her own YouTube channel and has a few Roblox videos there too.
