Joel Broad

Joel Broad

Senior Roblox game developer for games with real revenue.

I make games run faster, untangle technical debt and build projects that are scalable and flexible by design. Ex-Voldex, now freelance.

8yrs building on Roblox 3B+visits across games I've worked on Featured by Roblox→

Problems I can help with

  • Problem 1

    We need to launch before the trend dies.

    A launch push with A/B testing and analytics wired in before ship. Knockout for Brainrots, live in five days.

    Read the Knockout study →
  • Problem 2

    Our game is slow and we don't know why.

    Profiling-led performance work — server, client, and the mobile devices 3 of 4 players are on.

    Read the performance study →
  • Problem 3

    The codebase is blocking our roadmap.

    Rewrites scoped to what they earn: Driving Empire's customisation rewrite is why the Porsche and Lamborghini deals could ship.

    Read the rewrite story →
  • Problem 4

    Our brand partner expects platform-level polish.

    Integration engineering to the standard Roblox showcases in its own case studies. Shipt — 18M+ visits in two weeks.

    Read the Shipt study →

CASE STUDY / 01 · PERFORMANCE

Driving Empire

The architecture work that made development easier for everyone else, and the customisation rewrite the brand deals depended on.

Voldex's flagship driving game, where I was a senior engineer on the core team. The big thing I brought was code review and solid architecture on an acquired codebase — refactoring where it mattered so our development speed increased as well as quality. I improved performance, both memory and compute, and I was tech lead on the car-customisation system rewrite that brand integrations were built on.

  • Tracked down the slow loads and cut them from 15s+ to ~3s, which resulted in the onboarding funnel completion doubling.
  • Tech lead on the car-customisation rewrite, done with a junior I mentored as we went. The old backend was a mess; the redesign carried the filtering the Porsche and Lamborghini deals needed, and designers got an interface to tweak all values themselves; no engineer required and no restarts required.
  • Automated 90%+ of the car-implementation pipeline: a 3D artist's Blender model became a driveable, rigged in-game car in under 30 minutes instead of a manual 3+ hour job. Fewer errors, less QA, and the brand cars shipped clean.

15 months on Driving Empire — 3B lifetime visits.

15s+ → ~3s
Load time
3+ hrs → <30 min
Per-car implementation time

CASE STUDY / 02 · LAUNCH SPRINT

Knockout for Brainrots

Launched in five days.

A freelance build for a client who needed a live game in the 'brainrot' format while the trend was hot. Trends fade fast, so getting something live and solid before the window closed mattered more than getting everything in.

  • Five days is only possible if you cut scope on purpose. I decided early what deserved to be built well and what got sacrificed.
  • I understand when the business requirements need to prioritise speed over code quality.

9M lifetime visits since launch.

5 days
Concept → live

CASE STUDY / 03 · BRAND INTEGRATION

Shipt

The brand integration Roblox chose as a case study.

Shipt, a food delivery company, wanted an in-game delivery experience inside Driving Empire. I was tech lead on the integration, end to end.

  • Led development, writing the technical feature specs and API docs the other engineer built from.
  • Nobody asked me to, but I built it as live-ops infrastructure: the team can activate, deactivate, and test events remotely and on timers.
18M+
visits in two weeks
5M
unique visitors
27M
minutes delivering items
Voldex data, July 2023

Similar problem?

Book a call ↗

Games Ledger

GAMES — 6 TITLES · 3B+ LIFETIME VISITS

Game Contribution Period Visits
Knockout for Brainrots Built and launched in 5 days, concept to live.
  • Built an asset pipeline that formatted third-party assets to drop straight into the game.
  • Wired in thorough analytics and A/B testing ahead of launch.
  • Cut scope deliberately to hit the five-day window, deciding up front what to build well and what to leave out.
freelance Feb 2026 – Mar 2026 9M+
Tainted Snacks A party game where you secretly poison a snack and try not to get caught.
  • Built an NPC system the rest of the codebase treats as pseudo-players, so they can do anything a real player can.
  • Used it to deliberately craft a new player's first few minutes rather than leave the first session to chance.
personal Sep 2025 – Dec 2025 34.9K+
Word Wizards Bananagrams, but on Roblox.
  • A Scrabble-solving algorithm across eight languages, with right-to-left scripts supported from the start.
  • Built an asset pipeline: drop images, audio, or FBX models in a folder and it preprocesses, uploads, and fills a manifest with each asset's pixel size, audio duration, and triangle count.
personal Apr 2024 – Jul 2024 4.4K+
Driving Empire Performance, customisation rewrite, Shipt integration.
  • Rebuilt the car-customisation system the Porsche and Lamborghini brand deals ran on, mentoring a junior engineer through it.
  • Automated the car pipeline: a 3+ hour manual job down to under 30 minutes per car.
core-team Nov 2022 – Feb 2024 3B+
Pet Zoo Built from the ground up with the Voldex team.
  • My move into professional studio development, on the core team at Voldex.
  • Where I set my engineering foundations: git discipline, code review, and the team practices I bring to every project since.
core-team Dec 2021 – Jul 2022 32.1M+
Raise A Dragon Rebirth My first game — what got me onto Roblox.
  • The first Roblox game I earned real money from.
  • Living with its limits taught me why scalable, maintainable code matters, the principle I lead with today.
personal Mar 2018 – Dec 2018 3M+

How I work

Performance Audit
A written report on what's triggering FPS drops + causing crashes and what it'll take to fix.
Sprint
A launch push or a focused rebuild. Analytics are live before launch day.
Engagement
The long block: deep performance or architecture work on a live game, or a game built from scratch.
Advisory
A senior engineer on call to help in a pinch or advise on issues your technical team is having regarding your Roblox game.

What stays when I leave

Most contractors ship code and go. The reason to pay senior rates is what your team is doing differently after I've gone.

  • Pipelines, not tech debt. Implementing a car into Driving Empire was a manual 3+ hour job; I automated it to under 30 minutes, and the tool outlasted me.
  • Juniors who level up. I rebuilt the customisation system alongside a junior, mentoring as we went, with weekly 1:1s and code reviews that stuck.
  • Unit tests and QA commands that jump the game to any state instantly, so testing stops being the bottleneck.
  • An A/B testing framework, so decisions run on data rather than the loudest opinion.

Work with me

I'm the best fit for Roblox game developers with a live game, a launch date, or a game they want built.

No hourly work, and no contact form — let's hop on a 30-minute call.

Book a call ↗

Bring your game link and the problem you're chasing. We'll agree a daily overlap window and I reply within one working day.