Getting a solid roblox nextbot chase script running is basically the first step if you want to create the next big horror hit on the platform. We've all seen those games like Evade or Nico's Nextbots where a 2D image of a meme or a terrifying face chases you through a dark mall with ear-bleeding audio. It looks simple on the surface, but getting the movement to feel right—smooth, relentless, and actually scary—requires a bit of specific logic.
If you're new to scripting, don't sweat it. The core of a nextbot isn't nearly as complex as making a full-blown AI enemy with combat mechanics. It's mostly about pathfinding and distance checking. Let's break down how these things actually work and how you can put one together without pulling your hair out.
How the pathfinding logic works
At its heart, a nextbot is just a part or a model that knows where the player is and tries to get there as fast as possible. But you can't just tell the bot "go to player position" and call it a day. If you do that, the bot will try to walk through walls or get stuck behind a trash can. That's where Roblox's PathfindingService comes into play.
Think of PathfindingService as the GPS for your nextbot. It looks at the map, identifies the obstacles, and creates a series of waypoints for the bot to follow. When you're writing your roblox nextbot chase script, you're essentially telling the game: "Hey, find a path from the bot to the closest player, and then make the bot walk to each dot on that path one by one."
The trick is that players are always moving. If you only calculate the path once, the bot will walk to where the player was ten seconds ago. To make it a "chase," you have to constantly recalculate that path. However, recalculating it every single frame will absolutely tank your game's performance. Most good scripts find a sweet spot, like updating the path every 0.1 or 0.2 seconds.
Setting up the bot model
Before you even touch the code, you need something for the script to move. Most nextbots are just a simple rig. You'll usually want a "HumanoidRootPart" and a "Humanoid." The funny thing about nextbots is that they don't usually have walking animations. They just glide across the floor.
To get that classic look, you'll use a BillboardGui with an ImageLabel inside it. This makes the 2D image always face the player, no matter which way they're looking. It creates that eerie, uncanny feeling where the image is just flatly staring at you while it zooms toward your face at high speeds.
Once you have your part with a Humanoid and your image set up, you're ready to drop in the script. You'll usually put a Script (a server-side script) directly inside the bot model.
Breaking down the script components
A standard roblox nextbot chase script usually follows a specific flow. First, it defines the variables—things like the bot's speed, how close the player needs to be for the bot to "kill" them, and the PathfindingService itself.
Finding the nearest player
Since Roblox is a multiplayer platform, your bot needs to know who to chase. You'll write a function that loops through every player in the game, checks their distance from the bot, and picks the one that's closest. You don't want the bot chasing a player who is halfway across the map while someone else is standing right in front of it.
Moving to waypoints
Once the script has a target, it generates a path. This path is a collection of waypoints. The script then uses a loop to tell the bot's humanoid to MoveTo the position of the next waypoint.
Here's a tip: don't wait for the bot to reach a waypoint perfectly before moving to the next one. If you do, the movement will look jittery and robotic. You want the bot to start heading toward the next waypoint as soon as it gets "close enough" to the current one. This makes the movement look much more fluid.
Adding the audio and the "jumpscare"
What's a nextbot without some terrifyingly loud music? To add this to your roblox nextbot chase script, you'll want to put a Sound object inside the bot's head or root part. Set it to Looped and Playing.
To make it even better, you can adjust the volume or pitch based on how close the player is. But the most important part is the kill trigger. You'll usually use a .Touched event on the bot's main part. When it touches a part of a player's character, you check if it's a "Humanoid" and then set its health to zero. Simple, effective, and annoying for the player—exactly what a nextbot should be.
Making it performant
If you're planning on having ten or twenty bots chasing players at the same time, you have to be careful. Pathfinding is "expensive" in terms of server power. If every bot is constantly asking the server to calculate a new path every 0.01 seconds, the game will start to lag, and players will see the bots teleporting around.
One way to optimize your roblox nextbot chase script is to add a "Line of Sight" check. If the bot can see the player directly (using Raycasting), you don't need the PathfindingService. You can just tell the bot to walk directly toward the player's position. You only need to use the complicated pathfinding math when there's a wall or an obstacle in the way. This saves a ton of processing power and actually makes the bots feel a bit smarter.
Dealing with common bugs
You'll probably run into a few issues when you first get your script going. The most common one is the bot getting stuck on corners. This usually happens because the waypoints are generated too close to the wall. You can fix this by tweaking the AgentRadius in your pathfinding parameters. By telling the service that the bot is "wider" than it actually is, the pathfinder will give walls a wider berth.
Another issue is the bot "stuttering." This happens when the path is being recalculated too frequently or if the MoveToFinished event is fighting with your loop. Using a simple task.wait() and checking the distance to the current waypoint usually clears that right up.
Personalizing your nextbot
Once you have the basic roblox nextbot chase script working, the fun part is making it your own. You can change the walk speed to make some bots faster than others. You can add a "stunning" mechanic where if the player hits the bot with an item, the script pauses for a few seconds.
Some creators even add a "search" state. If the bot loses sight of all players, instead of just standing there, it can pick a random point on the map and wander there until it hears or sees a player again. This makes the game feel way more alive (and scary) than just having a bunch of images glued to the floor.
At the end of the day, the best way to learn is to just start tweaking values. Change the speed, change the pathfinding update rate, and see what happens. It's a lot of trial and error, but once you see that 2D image fly around a corner and jump-scare you for the first time, you'll know the script is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. Happy developing!