Roblox is not a single game. Roblox is a collection of games that all run in the same engine. To play Roblox you select a server from the built-in server browser. Each server runs different scripts that try to emulate an experience, a game, or a social space.
The Roblox engine barely functions correctly. The scripts people write (or more likely, find and cobble together) barely function correctly. Any amount of lag may send your character flying. The base controls, even without weird scripts running, are sluggish and unresponsive. Your character may fall into spikes but will continue to move until he inexplicably falls over, dead, a half second later, in full ragdoll as his limbs instantaneously detach.
Playing Roblox is to be in a perpetual state of confusion and terror. For example, you may join a server and be greeted with this:
and you’re immediately flooded with questions. Is this an official Moana Roblox server? What is an “Island Custom Game”? Did Disney proactively pay someone and say “we need an official Roblox server” or did some young entrepreneur pitch it and sell it to them? Is this how brands are “engaging” our children? Is it possible that this isn’t affiliated with Disney at all and someone made it just to entice all the Moana fans? I honestly have no clue!
Maybe instead you chose a server that tries to emulate GTA Online. You enter a car which spews fire out the back, blasts airhorn sounds, and inexplicably blows up when you try to take a corner. Or maybe you joined a server that immediately hoists you onto a spire, blasting royalty-free techno while juttering DRAGONS phase into and out of existence and the very ground you stand on dismantles itself.
There are obstacle course servers, speed running servers, zombie servers, natural disaster simulations, idle clicker servers, hide and seek, RPing servers where you can choose to be “PET” or “MOTHER”, competitive mini-game servers, servers where you try and survive riding down the world’s longest water slide, escape the room servers, a server that tries to simulate a dinosaur ecosystem as sponsored by (I kid you not!) Fruity Pebbles.
And every single one of these servers tries to shove micro-transactions down your throat. Do you want to wear cool clothes and not look like every other schmuck on this server? Only 50 Robux™! Imagine, instead of being the frightened humanoid, you could be the world-destroying phase-dragon! Only 400 Robux™! Can’t get past this obstacle? Pay us 100 Robux™ to skip to level 50. Or pay us 1000 Robux™ and just fucking fly and skip all that shit!
However, there does exist a single worthwhile Roblox server: when you join you’re put into a nearly featureless riveted steel hallway. Lining the hallway are octagonal portals of various sizes. You and a few strangers enter one of the portals and find yourselves in a cylindrical room. An operator in the hallway presses a small red button near the entrance and a glass window seals the chamber shut. Suddenly the entire cylinder starts spinning on its center axis. Your body is helplessly flung into ceiling and then back to the floor. You convulse wildly as you pick up speed. Your arms tear themselves from their sockets. The G-forces are so intense that your legs spaghettify and stretch out into infinity. Your view vibrates violently and you can no longer tell where you end and the others in the room begin. The room itself is a nightmare of clipping, non-euclidean geometry. Finally, the room appears to halt, but you know it’s only a stroboscopic illusion, and in that beautiful eye of the storm you realize what it truly means to be inside a washing machine.