How to make a game like 99 Nights in the Forest

BloxMaps is not affiliated with Roblox or with the developers of 99 Nights in the Forest. This page describes the kind of game in our own words so you can make your own, original one.

How the loop works

1. Day: gather. The group spreads out to chop wood, find scrap and pick food, carrying what they find in a sack that only holds so much.
2. Feed the fire. Fuel makes the campfire bigger, and a bigger fire lights a wider safe circle around camp.
3. Craft. Scrap and wood at a workbench become tools, lights and defences.
4. Night: survive. Creatures come out and hunt anyone outside the firelight. Players stay close, defend each other and keep the fire alive.
5. Rescue and go further. Lost campers wait out in the forest; finding them is the reason to go deeper. Every night survived gets you closer to the goal.

Why it works: day and night give the game a rhythm (calm, then tense), the fire is a shared thing everyone protects, and the sack limit forces teamwork. It's scary, but in a "let's stick together" way that's great with friends.

The systems you need

• A day/night cycle: a clock that drives Lighting.ClockTime and switches the game between day and night rules.
• The campfire: a fuel value that burns down over time; its size sets the radius of the safe zone and a PointLight's range.
• Resources and the sack: trees, scrap piles and bushes with ProximityPrompts; an inventory with a size limit.
• Crafting: recipes (wood + scrap = item) at a workbench, checked on the server.
• Night creatures: enemies that spawn at night and chase players outside the light (pathfinding, like the monster in the horror guide).
• Rescues and the goal: lost campers placed in the forest, and a night counter that ends the run in a win.

Building it in Roblox Studio

1. The forest. A big map with a clearing in the middle for camp, paths out, and landmarks so players can find their way back in the dark. The map generator can make the forest for you.
2. Day and night. A server loop that moves Lighting.ClockTime forward and sets a Night attribute on Workspace when it's dark.
3. The fire. A fuel number that drops every second; adding wood raises it. Scale the light and the safe radius from it.
4. Gathering. ProximityPrompts on resources that add to the player's sack (if there's room) and respawn after a while.
5. Creatures. At night, spawn a few at the forest edge. Each picks the nearest player who is outside the safe radius and chases them; they retreat at dawn.
6. Winning and losing. Count nights survived; end the run if everyone is down or the fire goes out, and win at the target night.

Test with several players: survival games are all about the group, and balance changes a lot between 1 and 4 players.

Make it yours (and keep it allowed)

Lots of Roblox hits start as "a game like X, but...". That's fine. What isn't fine, under Roblox's rules and copyright law, is copying: another game's name, logo, characters, art, sounds, map or scripts. Copies also tend to get reported and taken down, and players can tell. To make the format yours:

• Change the theme. Different world, different creatures or items, different mood.
• Add one rule of your own. A twist on the loop that only your game has.
• Use your own names and art, or assets you have the right to use from the Creator Store.
• Pick your own title. Don't put another game's name in yours to borrow its players.

Build one with BloxMaps

The BloxMaps Game Maker builds an original game in this format from a sentence: its own name, characters and map, with the UI, shop and gameplay systems, in one Roblox Studio file. Press the button to open it with this prompt (change anything you like first):

Building and previewing is free: 3 previews a day on the Free plan (games, maps and UIs together), and the plans build more. Exporting the finished .rbxl costs $14.99 once per game, or is included with the Studio plan. Then you open it in Roblox Studio, change what you want and publish it (how to publish).

The Game Maker's campfire survival format builds this kind of game in any forest you describe: day gathering with a limited sack, a campfire whose light grows when you feed it, crafting at the bench, night creatures, lost campers to rescue, and the number of nights you ask for. It's in Beta.

More ideas in this format

• Pine forest campfire

  Keep the campfire alive in a dark pine forest: chop wood by day, feed the fire so its light grows, and survive the nights when shadow wolves circle the camp

  Make this game
• Snowy tundra nights

  A snowy campfire survival game on the frozen tundra where you gather firewood, craft warm gear at the bench and survive the nights against snow beasts

  Make this game
• Desert canyon camp

  Survive the nights in a desert canyon camp with your friends, collect scrap and dry brush to feed the fire and keep the sand ghouls out of the light

  Make this game
• Swamp campfire survival

  A swamp night survival game where your campfire sits on a muddy island, gather wood from the cypress trees and rescue lost campers before the bog creatures come out

  Make this game
• Island beach bonfire

  Shipwrecked on a tropical island, keep the bonfire burning on the beach, gather driftwood and coconuts by day and survive the nights when crabs of the deep crawl out

  Make this game
• Redwood campfire nights

  A co-op campfire game under giant redwood trees where every log you burn makes the light ring wider and opens new parts of the forest to explore

  Make this game

See all Roblox game ideas, or other popular formats on make a game like the Roblox hits.