One of Roblox's biggest experiences right now is a bizarre Italian Brainrot character-stealing simulator and, lord help me, I now understand why it's so popular

Roblox never fails to impress me with the sheer number of experiences it hosts, alongside the millions of constantly active players. However sometimes a game comes along and stops me in my tracks. The latest addition to this evergrowing list is Steal a Brainrot, a game inspired by the "Italian Brainrot" AI-generated images that dominated social media briefly a few months ago. Steal a Brainrot is so popular it hit over 15 million concurrent players a few weeks ago thanks to a competition with Grow a Garden, and now consistently sits at a few million players daily.

From an outside perspective, particularly as someone who doesn't have any grasp of what "Italian Brainrot" is, I simply couldn't wrap my head around why this game was so popular. So of course, the next step was to log in myself and try to comprehend what exactly Steal a Brainrot is and why so many people are obsessed with it.

The entire experience takes place in what is essentially a large square which hosts eight players at a time, and each person has their own "base". To start, this consists of a single floor and eight spaces for you to hoard your characters. There's also a panel at the back which lets you lock your base for 60 seconds. I very quickly learnt that this lock button should be protected with your life. If you don't close your doors the second your base opens it's practically game over and you might as well start again.

A runway where you pluck your initial brainrot characters from covers the entire length of the map. Each one makes a different amount of money per second when they're in your base, but the more they make, the more they cost in the first place. Different ranks of characters are in play too, like common, epic, legendary, mythic, and the coveted "Brainrot God" title. Then on top of that, there are different variations of them like diamond, galaxy, and bloodrot. It's a lot to learn and sounds far more intense than it actually is when you're face to face with it.

You start with just enough money to buy the games' most humble character, Noobini Pizzanini, which makes $1 a second. If watching it wander toward your base while every other player is flexing all their Brainrot Gods wasn't embarrassing enough, the game even rubs salt in the wound by loudly announcing to everyone when a character has been purchased. Because of my character's low ranks and little income, I wasn't a target for theft at all. No one wanted to waste their time stealing my weak Brainrots when they could aim for each other so I just followed the natural next step: do the same and attempt to pull off the greatest Brainrot heist in history.

Armed to win

You're given a "Tung Bat" which is a wooden baseball bat you can clobber each other players with and temporarily stun them to start out. If you're quick enough this will give you enough time to run in their base when it unlocks, steal a character, and try to leg it back to your own before they catch you. If they hit you, then their Brainrot gets transported back to their base and you'll have to try again.

But the moment was here. A player's base unlocked, and while everyone was fighting over their more expensive characters I managed to sneak in and grab a Burbaloni Loliloli (essentially a capybara stuffed inside a coconut) to take back to my base. The $200/second yield was significantly more than my Noobini Pizzanini, which very quickly got sold, and I felt like I was finally rolling in cash. Sure, I was nowhere near as rich as the players on the leaderboard who had over $120 billion to their name but I felt like I might as well have been.

It's safe to say that this was simply the catalyst for my villain arc in Steal a Brainrot. I had a taste for blood and no one's characters were safe. Buying my own characters from the central runway became a total afterthought when there were so many characters ripe for the picking tucked away in peoples bases. All of a sudden my base was full and my funds were trickling up to over a million dollars each minute. But just as I thought things couldn't possibly get more intense, they did.

An update which stripped years off my life

When you get a certain amount of money, alongside a specific pair of characters, you can go through the "rebirth" process. This strips every character from your base, all your funds, and basically makes you begin again. But in exchange you unlock more weapons and tools to buy from the shop and, depending on what level you are, a new floor for your base giving you more space for additional characters. So I got into the routine of stealing characters, earning enough money to level up, and then starting again. Until I hit a wall of having the character I needed, but not enough money to go again.

Fortunately, this happened the same evening as one of Steal a Brainrot's updates. As I was so new to the game I had absolutely no idea what to expect. But to be completely honest, I don't think anyone new to the game would fully be able to expect what an update entails. As I was sorting out my base and selling the characters that didn't quite make enough money, a white message sprawled across the top of my screen warning that the following "concert" would be unsuitable for anyone who has any sort of epilepsy or photosensitivity to flashing lights and it was advised to log off. Interesting. I definitely should've thought more of it when it popped up.

Within seconds the entire game went pitch black. I could still move but had no idea where I was, until music started absolutely blasting through my headset and strobe lights started flashing on my screen. Messages kept popping up stating that rare characters were spawning and giving vague patch notes about new machines coming this week, and every other player on the server was going absolutely feral over all the new Brainrots entering the runway. My base was positioned directly next to where the new characters popped out of, which meant I could quickly rush in, buy them, and get them back to my base. This was, of course, if other players didn't spot what I was doing and try to buy them off me and direct them back to their own bases.

Luckily for me, everyone was so distracted with what was happening toward the end of the runway (and stealing from each other while the fifth rave started) that I ended up practically sweeping all the rarest characters while this event played out. Rather than listing them here I've shoved a couple into the table below. Or at least the ones I can remember being absolutely thrilled over getting:

Sensory overload is a complete understatement. After 40 minutes of concert after concert and trying to get the rarest characters back to my base, I logged off before the end of the full update cycle because of the headache forming and the motion sickness that was stemming from the sheer amount of screen wobble courtesy of this party. But I walked away a winner, and after the genuine excitement I felt scoring some of these characters after starting with nothing but a Noobini Pizzanini, I finally understand why so many players decide to spend their evenings playing this.

With that said, I have so many Brainrot Gods to my name, alongside multiple Secret characters you can only get during events like this, that I'm actually too scared to log back in. I just know the moment I load in, every other player is going to be standing at the doors of my base ready to rush in, turn me to stone or throw me across the map to steal my precious Brainrots. So I can't see myself going through the stress of Steal a Brainrot again any time soon. But at least I know I'll be absolutely rolling in it if I do crawl out of retirement.