Middle School Students in Denpasar Create 'Lost Ethos' on Roblox to Preserve Culture

Lost Ethos is an innovative game on the Roblox platform created by the ‘Hercules Heritage Cultural Games’ team, consisting of seven students from SMP Negeri 3 Denpasar. This game was born out of the students’ concern about the fading interest of the Alpha generation in local culture, especially traditional games that are now being replaced by online games that are considered to lack educational value.

The team leader and Game Developer, Putu Rena Aristawidya (13), said that this idea came from their observation of their peers’ habit of playing Roblox. However, according to him, most of the games on the platform focus more on entertainment than educational value.

“From our observations of the younger children around us who like to play Roblox, we noticed that the purpose of Roblox is only to entertain, with very little educational content,” explained Rena when interviewed by detikBali at SMP N 3 Denpasar, Wednesday (May 13, 2026).

Rena also highlighted the challenges of preserving traditional games, which require large spaces and special equipment. Therefore, Roblox was chosen as a platform to adapt these traditional games into a form that is easier for the current generation to enjoy.

“If you want to preserve traditional games, you usually need a large space. For example, Balogo from Kalimantan requires coconut shells, which are now becoming difficult to find,” said Rena.

Explore 7 Indonesian Islands Through Traditional Game Missions

In Lost Ethos, players are invited to explore seven islands in Indonesia through missions to complete various traditional games specific to each region. Each island is also equipped with cultural information such as traditional weapons, traditional clothing, dances, musical instruments, and traditional houses.

Their adventure does not stop there, but to obtain the lost gems that represent educational character values. Starting from cooperation, hard work, sportsmanship, to love of the motherland as the last gem to be obtained.

“In Sumatra, there is the gasiang game, in Sulawesi there is Baguli, in Java there is Gobag Sodor, in Kalimantan there is Balogo, in Bali there is Meong-meong, in Maluku there is Boi Tampurung, and finally in Papua there is Puradan. To make it easier for players to recognize and enjoy the game, we use simple interactions such as clicking and pressing,” said Game Developers Hercules I Gusti Lanang Bagus Arya Prajna Putra and I Nyoman Athaya Dhirendra Wijaya.

The Hercules team explained that the development of Lost Ethos was motivated by observations of games that are already familiar to the community. These games were also chosen because they are easy to develop into a two-dimensional online game.

Single Player for Focus on Education

Lost Ethos is different from other Roblox games. If usually Roblox games can be played by many players (multi-player), Lost Ethos can only be played by one player (single-player).

The Hercules team explained that Lost Ethos was designed from the beginning with a single-player system. This is because if the system were changed to multi-player, the coding process would be more complicated and the game would have to be redeveloped.

In addition, the single-player concept was also implemented as a step to anticipate that interactions between players would not be misused. Thus, the game remains focused as an educational medium.

“Previously, there were many issues on Roblox about inappropriate interactions for children under the age of 13. So to avoid this, we set it up so that only one player can be on one server,” said Rena.

“If the game had to be multi-player, we would have to create it from scratch, which would be more difficult,” he added.

Recruit Members and Learn Coding Independently to Develop Lost Ethos

The Hercules team from SMP N 3 Denpasar initially consisted of two people, namely Putu Rena Aristawidya and Ni Kadek Dinda Karenina Putri Raka as Graphic Designer. The two of them started their journey by establishing Cultural Quests Journey with a similar game concept.

However, because they wanted to expand the development of the game, they then recruited other members as game developers, graphic designers, and research writers. They admitted that the journey to perfect Lost Ethos was not easy.

“We don’t have any communication with cultural media experts, so in the end, our models are only based on research journals about Indonesian culture and books. We look for the most relevant ones, so the years are still recent, so as not to misinform,” said Rena.

In addition, they admitted that they learned independently in programming and designing the game system, “The whole process took 6 months, because our skills started from zero. We had to recreate the islands, which took a long time because we had to redo and modify them. The most difficult thing was finding buildings that were suitable and similar to traditional houses,” said Athan and Gunggus as Game Developers.

“In the game, we use the coding system from Roblox. This is the most crucial and complicated. There were many difficulties, because when we ran the game, there were many errors. For example, the rotation of the NPCs,” they added.

Not only from the game developer side, the graphic design team also faced difficulties in representing the seven Indonesian islands in the visual design. Ni Kadek Dinda Karenina Putri Raka and I Gusti Ayu Mirah Divya Adisti admitted that they were constrained by the limited elements in the design application so that some visuals had to be redrawn and even made their own animated videos.

Finally, the research writer team, consisting of Ketut Laksmana Shagara Dhiraja Putra Hartawan and Putu Radinka Deandra Arcelia, were in charge of ensuring that the research results remained relevant, including conducting research trials by distributing questionnaires. This step was taken to measure the success of Lost Ethos in achieving the team’s goals.

Won Silver at the Malaysia Technology Expo

The innovation of Lost Ethos has brought the Hercules team to win a silver medal at the Malaysia Technology Expo (MTE) in Kuala Lumpur on April 9-11, 2026. In this event, they presented the game live.