Building Your First Roblox Game in 2026

Build a small coin collector in Roblox Studio, write one Luau script that keeps score, test it, and share it with your friends.

You do not need a big idea to make your first Roblox game. You need one loop that works from start to finish. In this tutorial, you will build a coin collector: the player spawns on a small platform, runs into glowing coins, and watches a score go up on the leaderboard. Then you will publish it so only you and your Roblox friends can play.

Most of your time will go into learning the Studio layout and your first script. That time pays off on every later project.

Step 1: Install Roblox Studio and open a template

Get Roblox Studio from the official Roblox Creator Hub and sign in with your Roblox account. When Studio opens, you will see a set of starting templates. Pick the plain Baseplate template. It gives you a flat gray floor, a spawn point, and nothing else, which is exactly what you want for learning.

Studio’s interface gets redesigned from time to time, so a button may sit in a slightly different place than you expect. If you cannot find something mentioned here, use the search field in Studio or hover over toolbar icons to read their names.

Step 2: Learn the two panels you will use most

Before you build anything, find two windows. If they are not open, turn them on from the window or view menu in Studio.

Explorer is a tree of everything in your game. At the top level you will see services such as Workspace, Players, Lighting, and ServerScriptService. Workspace holds every physical object in the 3D world. ServerScriptService holds scripts that run on Roblox’s servers, where players cannot tamper with them.

Properties shows the settings of whatever you select. Click the Baseplate in Explorer and the Properties window fills with its size, color, material, and whether it is anchored. Change a value here and the object changes right away.

Think of Explorer as “what exists” and Properties as “how it looks and behaves.” Almost everything you do in Studio is selecting something in one window and adjusting it in the other.

Step 3: Build the play area

Keep the world small. You want the player to find every coin in a minute or two.

1. Insert a new Part from the toolbar. It appears in front of the camera.
2. With the part selected, use the Scale tool to stretch it into a raised platform.
3. In Properties, turn on Anchored so the platform does not fall or get pushed around. Every part you build in this tutorial should be anchored.
4. Give it a color and material you like. Duplicate it a few times to make two or three platforms at different heights, with gaps the player can jump.

Press Play for a moment to check that the jumps are possible. Then press Stop to return to editing. Changes you make while playing are thrown away when you stop, so always stop before you edit.

Step 4: Make the coins

1. Insert a new Part and change its Shape property to Cylinder.
2. Scale it into a flat disc and rotate it so it stands on its edge like a coin.
3. Set its color to yellow and its Material to Neon so it stands out.
4. Turn on Anchored. Turn off CanCollide so the player passes through it instead of bumping into it. Leave CanTouch on, because the script needs touch events.
5. Rename the part to Coin by double-clicking its name in Explorer.

Now organize. Right-click Workspace in Explorer and insert a Folder. Rename it Coins. Drag your coin into that folder, then duplicate it and spread copies across your platforms.

Putting every coin in one folder means your script can find them all at once instead of searching the whole world.

Step 5: Write the Luau script

Luau is the scripting language Roblox uses. It is based on Lua, with extras such as optional type annotations and compound operators like +=.

In Explorer, hover over ServerScriptService, click the plus button, and insert a Script. Rename it CoinManager. Double-click it to open the script editor, delete the starter line, and type this:

local Players = game:GetService("Players")

-- Give every player a score on the leaderboard
Players.PlayerAdded:Connect(function(player)
    local leaderstats = Instance.new("Folder")
    leaderstats.Name = "leaderstats"
    leaderstats.Parent = player

    local coins = Instance.new("IntValue")
    coins.Name = "Coins"
    coins.Value = 0
    coins.Parent = leaderstats
end)

-- Hook up every coin in the Coins folder
local coinFolder = workspace:WaitForChild("Coins")

for _, coin in coinFolder:GetChildren() do
    local collected = false

    coin.Touched:Connect(function(hit)
        if collected then
            return
        end

        local player = Players:GetPlayerFromCharacter(hit.Parent)
        if player then
            collected = true
            player.leaderstats.Coins.Value += 1
            coin:Destroy()
        end
    end)
end

Here is what each part does, in plain language.

The first line asks Roblox for the Players service, which tracks everyone in the game.

The PlayerAdded block runs once for each person who joins. It creates a folder named leaderstats inside that player. Roblox treats a folder with that exact lowercase name as special: any number values inside it show up on the in-game leaderboard. The IntValue named Coins is the score.

The second half waits until the Coins folder exists, then loops over every coin in it. For each coin, it listens for the Touched event, which fires whenever another part bumps into the coin.

A touch can come from anything, including a falling brick. So the script checks whether the thing that touched the coin belongs to a player’s character. hit is usually an arm or leg, and its parent is the character model. GetPlayerFromCharacter turns that model into a player, or returns nothing if it was not a player.

The collected flag matters because a character touches a coin with several body parts in the same instant. Without the flag, one coin could count two or three times. Once the coin is claimed, the score goes up by one and the coin is removed from the world.

Step 6: Play test

Click Play. Your avatar spawns on the baseplate. Look at the top right of the screen for the leaderboard with a Coins column. Run into a coin. It should vanish and the number should go up by exactly one.

If nothing happens, open the Output window. Script errors appear there in red with a line number. The most common problems are:

• The folder is not named exactly Coins, so the script waits forever.
• leaderstats is capitalized, so the leaderboard does not appear.
• CanTouch is off on the coin.
• The script was placed as a LocalScript or somewhere other than ServerScriptService.

Fix one thing at a time, stop, and play again.

Step 7: Publish for friends only

When the loop works, save it to Roblox. Use File > Publish to Roblox, give the game a name and short description, and confirm.

Roblox’s current documentation states that newly published games start as private, which means only you and anyone with edit access can join. To let your friends in without making the game public:

1. Open the Creator Dashboard on the Creator Hub and select your game.
2. Go to Configure, then Settings.
3. Under Audience, choose Limited, then Friends.

The Friends option appears only for games owned by your personal account, not by a group. Save your changes, then send a friend the game’s page. Roblox may ask you to complete steps such as a content maturity questionnaire before some audience options become available. Follow whatever the dashboard asks for at the time.

What to try next

With a working loop, small upgrades teach you the most:

• Make coins respawn after a few seconds instead of disappearing for good.
• Add a sound when a coin is collected.
• Show a “You found them all” message when the score matches the number of coins.
• Add a moving platform with a second short script.

Each of those uses the same pattern you just learned: find the object in Explorer, adjust it in Properties, and react to an event in a script.