How to make a game like Build An Ant Empire

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

How the loop works

1. Roll for workers. A queen (or a hatchery, a factory) rolls units for free on a timer. Rarer units are stronger. Upgrades improve your luck and your roll speed.
2. Buy and place them. Units you want go into slots in your nest, floor by floor.
3. They gather. Placed units leave the nest, collect food from a source on your plot, and carry it home. You can watch the line of workers going back and forth.
4. Sell at the right time. Food sells at a market price that rises and falls. Selling high is a small, fun decision players make again and again.
5. Grow the colony. Spend on more floors, better units and upgrade boards, until you have the biggest nest on the server.

Why it works: it's a tycoon you can watch move. Rolling gives the excitement of luck, the workers make your base feel alive, and the changing price adds a reason to check in.

The systems you need

• Rolling: a timed free roll with weighted rarities and upgradeable luck. Show the odds.
• The nest: floors with unit slots, more floors bought with cash.
• Worker routes: each placed unit walks from the nest to the food source and back, carrying an amount based on its stats.
• The market: a server-wide price that changes over time, shown as a number or a small chart.
• Upgrade boards: walls of upgrades (carry amount, speed, luck, roll time) bought with cash.
• Saving and a shop: units, floors, upgrades and cash saved; passes like faster rolls or more luck, and products like a luck boost.

Building it in Roblox Studio

1. The worker. One unit model that walks from the nest to the food source with Humanoid:MoveTo, waits, walks back and adds food to the owner's count. With many workers, moving simple models with TweenService along a fixed route is lighter than Humanoids.
2. Slots. A floor model with numbered slot parts. Placing a unit puts it in the next free slot and starts its trips.
3. Rolling. A server function that picks a unit from a weighted table (see the egg example in the simulator guide), on a cooldown per player.
4. The market price. A server loop that nudges the price up or down every few seconds within a range, stored as an attribute everyone's UI reads.
5. Upgrades. Each upgrade is a number in a table; buying one checks the cost on the server and raises the number.
6. Plots and saving. One plot per player, saved as a table of units per slot, floors and upgrades.

Keep the worker count per server reasonable: a hundred walking units per player adds up fast. Many games show a few walking workers and count the rest.

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 colony empire format works with any creature you name: ants, bees, frogs, robots, fairies. It builds the queen and the rolls, units bought off podiums, nest floors, workers carrying food home, a changing market price and upgrade boards. It's in Beta.

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