New Years Obby 2026

Inspiration

I wanted to create a Roblox obby that represents the entire year of 2026. Each month is connected to a different country, using its environment, architecture, weather, flag, and theme. The game begins in January 2026 in Finland 🇫🇮 and ends with a New Year 2027 celebration after Iceland 🇮🇸.

I developed the project in Sweden 🇸🇪 with help from OpenAI Codex.

What it does

New Years Obby 2026 takes players through 12 monthly levels:

• January — Finland 🇫🇮
• February — Ireland 🇮🇪
• March — Belgium 🇧🇪
• April — Netherlands 🇳🇱
• May — Hong Kong 🇭🇰
• June — Australia 🇦🇺
• July — Sweden 🇸🇪
• August — Germany 🇩🇪
• September — Denmark 🇩🇰
• October — Switzerland 🇨🇭
• November — Norway 🇳🇴
• December — Iceland 🇮🇸

Players complete obstacles, reach checkpoints, collect calendar items, earn Shekels, unlock trails and power-ups, and compete on global leaderboards. The game tracks completion time, deaths, playtime, donations, completions, and the highest Shekel balance ever reached.

The final destination is January 2027, where players receive a New Year celebration and the message: “To be continued, Happy New Year 🥳”.

How I built it

I built the game in Roblox Studio using Luau. OpenAI Codex helped me develop, inspect, debug, and improve the game’s systems. I used Rojo to synchronize the project files with Roblox Studio and MCP when available to inspect the live project.

The project includes:

• Server-validated checkpoints and run progression
• Saved timer, death count, and checkpoint progress
• Global leaderboards and avatar podiums
• A large-number Shekel economy
• Daily rewards and player-to-player Shekel transfers
• Item, trail, jump, speed, and punch shops
• Collectibles, badges, weapons, and a Flying Carpet
• Mobile, PC, and controller support
• Anti-exploit validation for important gameplay systems

I also manually tested and adjusted interface sizes, viewing ranges, sign positions, Shop layouts, and gameplay behaviour when generated results needed correction.

Challenges

One major challenge was keeping the game’s many systems connected without breaking existing features. Checkpoints, timers, deaths, saved runs, leaderboards, Shops, rewards, and multiplayer systems all depend on one another.

Other challenges included:

• Preventing players from starting the obby through an unofficial side entrance
• Preserving timer, deaths, and checkpoint progress after leaving
• Supporting extremely large Shekel values using scientific notation
• Preventing duplicate purchases, rewards, transfers, and leaderboard submissions
• Making the interface readable on mobile without covering the screen
• Keeping Rojo, Roblox Studio, and the project files synchronized
• Finding and correcting AI-generated changes that affected working manual fixes

Accomplishments

I am proud that the game grew from a basic obby concept into a complete year-long experience with 12 countries, persistent progression, an economy, Shops, collectibles, badges, weapons, power-ups, and competitive leaderboards.

I am also proud that I learned how to direct an AI coding agent with detailed requirements, review its work, test the result, report bugs, and manually correct problems instead of accepting every generated change automatically.

What I learned

This project taught me that AI-assisted development still requires planning, testing, verification, and human decisions. Clear prompts help, but every system must be checked inside the actual game.

I learned more about:

• Roblox Studio and Luau
• Client-server security
• DataStore persistence
• Multiplayer testing
• Interface design
• Debugging interconnected systems
• Rojo development workflows
• Working effectively with OpenAI Codex

What's next

Next, I plan to continue testing the full game, improve the environments and visual effects, fix remaining bugs, create a gameplay demonstration video, and prepare New Years Obby 2027 as the continuation.

Built With

• ai
• datastore
• gamedevelopment
• luau
• macos
• mcp
• mobile
• multiplayer
• openaicodex
• roblox
• robloxstudio
• rojo