Every week, we’re busy telling the stories behind our community, our technology and our place in the gaming and technology industries. For those of you who catch up with us over the weekend, the Weekly Roundup collects the best stuff to hit our various avenues of publication in the last week. This time: another four fan art contest winners, an inside look at ROBLOX’s 2013 Hack Week, game universes and massive scale, our 2013 holiday game, ROBLOX Survivor 2.0, two game recommendations, and other bits and pieces. Enjoy.

Fan art contest winners, round 4

Looking at this week’s selection of winners, it really hit home just how many amazing and talented artists there are in the ROBLOX community. Keep honing your craft!

We’ll have another round of winners to announce in the next edition of the Weekly Roundup, which will also be the first of 2014 (i.e., January 5th). Stay tuned!

Seven-day blog recap

This week was Hack Week at ROBLOX so, while we were light on breaking news, there was a lot of exciting stuff happening behind the scenes. We started the week with a recap of Hack Week projects from years past that actually went on to become features on production, and closed the work with with an inside look at some of the really cool and exciting demos we saw from this year’s week of exploration. ROBLOX on an Oculus Rift? A potential new look for particle effects? And more? You’ll see it all!

Remember, Hack Week allows the ROBLOX staff to explore ideas and experiments. Nothing you see in our recap is committed to release to production. Still, we appreciate your feedback!

Now that I look back, there was some news this week. We made a formal announcement of the upcoming game universes (and associated features, all of which are being used to power the Winter Games), then held a live Q&A session to answer your questions about the project.

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We also launched our official holiday game for 2013, which was created by the Rudimentality development group. It’s hosted on our Games team’s account, meaning you can win exclusive hats for earning badges. On top of that game-centric news, we explored the upcoming sequel to ROBLOX Survivor, which is now being developed by Jojomen56.

Not a bad week, considering we’re going straight into our holiday break.

You should play this game

Ever dream that you could lift a truck with your mind, set it on fire, then send it hurling into the night sky? Me too! In The Telekinesis Playground, you can do just that, and much more! Builder BetterBe has created a really cool control system that allows you to pick objects up with your mind, light them on fire, make them transparent, make them explode, change their color, etc. Imagine five people in a server with these kinds of powers, and you’ll start to get a picture of how crazy this map can be. In the last instance I was in, I was lining up a shot to throw a flaming ball at another player when a truck came crashing down on top of me. Someone else had the same idea, but wasn’t afraid to think a little bigger.

Deathrun 2 is the long-awaiting sequel to the original Deathrun, and it is awesome. Pure fun. The concept is a great redefinition of the standard obstacle course, where players are divided into two separate teams — the runners and the killers. The killers do their thing from afar, pressing buttons to make platforms disappear, send boulders rolling down slopes, make killer obstacles rotate and spin, and make walls explode out of nowhere, among other (very, very satisfying) traps. With fun music and a rotation of smart/aesthetically pleasing levels, there’s a reason this game has shot to the top of the Games page.

Bits

Crazyman32 has released a finished version of Terra Novus , now featuring adventure/exploration gameplay.

Check this out: Lincoln Logs made in ROBLOX!

Remember when we told you about SONICTHEHEDGEHOGXX wanting to put his Developer Exchange funds toward a new computer? Well, he did. Congrats!

Make sure to check out the results of our daily-livestream experiment from last week.

All Roundup readers: have a great holiday. You all have a special place in my heart!

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