Roblox Tower Defense Dev Team: Leadership for Teen Coders

Real games are built by teams, and leading a team is a skill of its own. In this eight-week course teens aged 13 to 16 work in small development teams to build a tower defense game in Roblox Studio, rotating through leadership roles along the way.

The course begins with team formation. Teens learn about roles such as project lead, gameplay programmer, level designer and tester, and each team writes a short game plan with goals and deadlines. They then use Team Create in Roblox Studio to build together. Early weeks focus on core systems: enemy pathing, targeting towers, upgrades and a wave manager written in organized ModuleScripts.

Each week a different member serves as project lead. The lead runs a short planning meeting, assigns tasks, checks progress and resolves blockers with support from the teacher. Teams practice code reviews, giving clear, respectful feedback on each other's scripts. Later weeks add tower upgrades, boss waves and a balance pass based on playtest data.

In the final week teams present their game, explain how they divided the work and reflect on what made their leadership effective. The teacher coaches both the coding and the teamwork throughout.

By the end teens will have shipped a team-built game and gained real experience leading peers. Learners should be comfortable with Lua functions, tables and events.

How classes work

Teams build together in Team Create with weekly planning meetings led by a rotating project lead. Each class includes coding time, a code review and a short team retrospective.

What we'll cover

• Week 1: Team Formation – Choose roles and write a team game plan.

• Week 2: Team Create and Pathing – Build together and code enemy paths.

• Week 3: Targeting Towers – Code towers in organized modules.

• Week 4: Wave Manager – Build a wave system as a team.

• Week 5: Leading Code Reviews – Practice respectful code review.

• Week 6: Upgrades and Bosses – Add tower upgrades and boss waves.

• Week 7: Balance Pass – Use playtest data to balance.

• Week 8: Ship and Reflect – Present the game and reflect on leadership.

Comfortable with Lua functions, tables and events. Experience building at least one Roblox game.