Category: Development Processess

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Development Processess Game Related Industry

Remaster VS Remakes: What actually is the difference?

Remaster VS Remakes: What actually is the difference?

SubTitle

With the Internet often interchanging words it can be difficult to actually understand what 2 similar words actually mean, especially when their definitions are so close to begin with. To help differentiate between a Remaster and a Remake we will look at a few examples and explore why they’re labelled differently.

To start this conversation we need to understand the differences between a Remake and Remaster.

A Remaster is where the studio focuses on enhancing the game’s visuals and removing bugs, but otherwise keeping the mechanics, story and features the same throughout, Remasters focus heavily on giving the player a sense of Nostalgia. The idea is to ensure the game is visually understandable and mechanically playable, whilst still keeping it as close to the original version as possible.

Whereas a Remake is answering the question of what would you do differently if you were to create the game again. Remakes often come with visual, mechanical and a narrative upgrade, which sometimes changes the characters and plot points throughout the game.

Most developers and publishers will choose one or the other, however some do choose to create both a Remaster and Remake of the game. Although the original developer of SystemShock, Looking Glass Studio, no longer existed at this point the IP still held value and eventually made its way into the hands of Night Dive Studios. In order to keep the game playable they initially released an update to enable the game to be played on newer consoles; called SystemShock: Enhanced Edition, on the 22nd of September, 2015. This release also increased many of the original technical aspects and mechanics; such as increasing the resolution from the original 320 × 200, to an improved 1024 × 768. The Enhanced Edition also comes with the original renamed to SystemShock: Classic so players can replay the original if they desire to. This Remaster got quite a positive reception with many saying it was a great way to experience the series if players hadn’t tried a SystemShock game yet.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhRp4HT40PE

Classic Playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4i5CqIddlg&list=PLaxNnb3i_nS4cTdf_1H09g7gtzAaOpsM4

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/410710/System_Shock_Enhanced_Edition/

SystemShock Enhanced Edition

In 2015 Night Dive Studios started on a different version; after quite a few set-backs and restarts an official Remake of SystemShock was released in 2023 – 5 years after its original release date. This Remake received mixed, but mostly positive reviews; with most critics viewing it the same way the devs did: a faithful Remake of the original. Some critics have said that the mechanics seem a little too faithful; claiming that they could’ve modernised them to help the Remake appeal to newcomers as opposed to the existing fans.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDAppJ8HuIM

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/482400/System_Shock/

As we have demonstrated above the differences between a Remake and Remaster are drastic, with SystemShock: Enhanced Edition keeping the same pixel art style feel to the game. A player familiar with the series would automatically be able to look at gameplay and trailers and understand what franchise it belongs to. Whereas with the drastic change to 3D, in depth lighting and a more grungy vibe it would take some people by surprise that it is another addition to the series. Though this isn’t the first time such a dramatic change happened, with the new DOOM games doing the same 3D grungy feel. Thankfully when playing the games it can still feel like the original, especially if you still have big guns to mow down your enemies!

Just remember if Nostalgia is the main focus, it’s a Remaster; if it isn’t then it’s a Remake!

If you want to have a more indepth look into some other Remakes or Remasters here is a great list of the more memorable games:

The reasons why a developer may choose either one is entirely dependent on their vision for the game and its franchise as well as the target audience they’re aiming for. To reiterate the differences between the 2;

A Remake is

  • Redesigning the game from the ground up
  • New visuals
  • New game mechanics
  • Often have a changed narrative

A Remaster is

  • Refurbishing the original game
  • Updating the visuals to work with current technology
  • Removing bugs and small quality of life changes
  • Allows people to experience nostalgia and to replay the game from their childhood without the “downsides” of an older game

When looking at creating a Remake or a Remaster of a game there is no right decision, it is up to those developing the game and what they believe they and their audience want from this experience.

Whilst this is just one example of developers wanting to honour a videogame in more than one way, it is certainly still a bit of an outlier. Many developers and publishers will generally just choose to either a Remake or Remaster instead of both. Furthermore it is more likely to be fans of the game or series that will create a mix of Remakes and Remasters that fit their expectations and beliefs.

With Metroid: Samus Returns and Another Metroid 2 Remake being the main comparison and centre of this conversation, it is only fair that we take into consideration what people actually want when an older game/series gets brought back. Using MSR and AM2R is great because overall they’re both considered great games in their own right, despite being quite different from the other.

To start off with a brief introduction to the original Metroid 2 game:

A sequel to the original Metroid game released in 1986; Metroid II: Return of Samus released in 1991 as an action-adventure game, continuing to follow the bounty hunter Samus Aran. Players control her as she hunts and attempts to eradicate the Metroids from their home planet of SR388, before the Space Pirates can obtain them. The Space Pirates are the primary enemy from the original Metroid game, with them creating the Metroids and then weaponising them due to their new abilities to evolve into different and far deadlier forms of themselves. This was also the first of the Metroid games to be developed for and released on the Game Boy.

The game introduced new mechanics and was praised for its story, setting and gameplay; but was criticised for its graphics and audio quality.

Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF1C0xZxBOw

Metroid: Samus Returns is a 2017 action-adventure game and is a Remake of the original 1991 GameBoy game Metroid II: Return of Samus. The remake follows the same story and structure of the original, however it features updated graphics, controls and user interface, with some new gameplay mechanics that had not yet been seen in any previous 2D Metroid titles.

Metroid: Samus Returns received positive reviews upon its release, many complimenting it on its visuals and mechanical improvements over the original, as well as being considered a solid return to form for the Metroid series. It received multiple awards and accolades including “Best Handheld Game” at the Game Awards 2017 and “Handheld Game of the Year” at the 21st D.I.C.E Awards. With the success of the Remake developers MercurySteam went on to make the next well-loved Metroid game- Metroid Dread for the Nintendo Switch.

Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fw1pDgbQ8I

Another Metroid 2 Remake or AM2R is also an action-adventure game developed by an Argentinian programmer named Milton Guasti (DoctorM64) and released in 2016 for Metroid’s 30th birthday. AM2R is a fan-made/unofficial Remake of the original 1991 game Metroid II: Return of Samus using the visual style of Metroid: Zero Mission (2004).

Like the original, players play as Samus Aran hunting down and eradicating the parasitic Metroids. Unlike the original though, AM2R adds in several features such as new graphics, music, areas, bosses, a map system and alters some of the controls. AM2R takes a lot of inspiration and mechanics from newer 2D Metroid games to enhance and update the original.

Another Metroid 2 Remake saw a positive reception upon its release and many journalists called it a standout among the many other fan-made Metroid games. Due to AM2R releasing well before the official Remake, Jonathan Holmes from Destructoid said that AM2R does a good job at filling the “void” left by Nintendo’s lack of new 2D Metroid games.

Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCMeKM1w1UM

As you can see the official and unofficial Remakes of Metroid II: Return of Samus are 2 very different takes on a Remake of the same game with many fans enjoying both as well. If you want to look into more of a comparison between the unofficial and official Remakes take a look at this great read/video by Game Maker’s Toolkit.

https://youtu.be/8WkEoYvlUF0?si=ni1bldqTSG5-N-fv

Though; I will like to mention that due to AM2R’s success Nintendo felt threatened enough by it that it sent a DMCA to the developer, Milton Guasti, which was quite a controversial move and made many fans feel unwelcome to create fan works of the Metroid series or other Nintendo IP. They were also very quick to send notices to websites hosting the game and to the developer as well, only giving the game 1 day of full release. Although many fans continue to allow the game through “pirating” software such as Torrent, it is still easily accessible through the right means. Although a disappointment, it isn’t surprising with Nintendo being one of the strictest (alongside Disney) for any fan-made works/art or even YouTubers and Streamers playing their games live, especially if that’s their full-time job.

On a slightly different note, Modding is quite similar in this vein; where a player often feels something could be improved – with this often being small changes. Or they add additional content to increase options for the player or add whole new cities or overhaul story elements. Whilst not being a full Remake or Remaster of the game, they have definitely helped to keep some old games feel lively with ensuring that the game is able to keep up with modern technology. However, because players can mix and match as many or as little Mods as they want it doesn’t really count as either a Remake or a Remaster. Though I think this is a great topic to look into a bit later this year!

Keep an eye out for that in the near future!

To recap what was discussed, a Remaster is where the studio focuses on enhancing the game’s visuals and removing bugs, but otherwise keeps the mechanics, story and features the same throughout. And a Remake is where they still update the visuals but change the mechanical and narrative from the original. This often changes the game and does take away from the Nostalgia that a Remaster focuses on keeping.

Whilst I do believe that this topic is much deeper than what I have gone over here, the definition is also muddied a bit when people try and aim for a mix of the 2. I’ll have a bunch of links below to all the websites and information I found on all the above topics if you want to really explore the rabbit hole!

References:

What’s the Difference Between a Remake and a Remaster?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Shock#Sequels_and_remakes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Shock_(2023_video_game)

https://metroid.fandom.com/wiki/Another_Metroid_2_Remake

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AM2R

https://metroid2remake.blogspot.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroid:_Samus_Returns

https://metroid.fandom.com/wiki/Another_Metroid_2_Remake#:~:text=downloading%20the%20game.-,Shutdown,any%20download%20links%20be%20removed

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Development Processess Industry

It’s Time To Change The Way You Interact With Customers!

It’s Time To Change The Way You Interact With Customers!

As everyone knows, video games are often viewed as a tool of entertainment and distraction, allowing players and viewers to forget about the world around them for hours at a time. However productive or useful you believe this outcome to be, it is an excellent way to grab and hold people’s attention and this is something you should be engaging with. It is a new way to interact and communicate with your audience and the most efficient way to educate and get your company’s story and vision out there.

But before I go into any more detail about how you can use this to your advantage, I think it is important to define what the purpose and strengths of games are and what you should be achieving when deciding to engage with your target audience.

Firstly the purpose of a video game is to:

  1. Entertain and keep an individual’s engagement and attention for a long period of time
  2. Use to education and share information

This brings with it a few strengths:

  • It is easier for users to engage with your story and content
  • Can reach a wider audience – including both children, adults and those who speak a different language

Purpose of interacting with your audience is to:

  • Increases sales
  • Increases trust with existing and new customers
  • Broadens your potential reach
  • Keeps existing customers engaged with your company and products/services

I know this seems like an intimidating task and it certainly can be, but how exactly will video games help to boost your audience reach and engagement?

First you have to determine how long you want your audience to be engaging with a video game; for example mobile products aim to keep their player’s attention for a minimum of 6 minutes, whilst many console and PC games aim for a minimum of 30 minutes to 1 hour.

By determining why you’re engaging with your audience you can figure this out. We have had previous clients who have been using a short video game that takes a maximum of 10 minutes to teach and engage with their audience at expos and fairs. Waste Wranglers is a perfect example of how a council can interact with their audience and how to create a positive change in their community. Enabling many people to engage with them whilst also teaching their audience what they wanted, to learn which waste goes in which bin.

Watch a quick playthrough of Waste Wranglers Here!

If you are aiming to take a video game to help with engagement and interest at expos, fairs or events aiming for each player to have approximately 10 minutes is a good middle ground to keep people entertained and not have them “hogging” the game at busy public events. If you’re looking for a more personal and intimate experience with your audience then a longer game with a more indepth story and gameplay would be more beneficial, this would enable those to relate to your company and story instead of being engaged with just the purpose of your interaction with them.

Solution

Lucky for you, we provide interactive entertainment and educational content, or in a more succinct way; edutainment video games.

We have an easy and simple 4-step process in place to ensure that the product you receive is what you need to increase engagement with your target audience.

We start off with the discovery phase where we will work alongside you to determine what interactive experience will benefit you and your goals. Throughout this process we will create 4 detailed documents going over the method to build your product along with how and who will engage with it once it’s been completed.

  • Game Design Document

How the experience will play out and how users will interact with it

  • Technical Design Document

How all the behind the scenes coding and technicalities will work

  • Art Bible

Determines the visual aesthetic and how it will appeal to your core audience

  • Production Plan

Details the budget, costs, development timelines and any funding options and opportunities available

When you’re all happy with the documents and development process we will move onto the development phase; where your product will be created using our in place processes and production pipeline. During this phase we have milestones where we will ensure that you are happy with how the development is going and to voice any queries or concerns you may have. Progress will ensure we hit the following milestones within the determined timelines from the Production Plan document:

  • An MVP or Minimum Viable Product

Simple version of the final mechanics and some basic art

  • Mechanically Complete Alpha

Basic art, with main art assets having been created with the full and complete version of the mechanics

  • Content Complete Beta

First pass on all the art assets and mechanics – enables you to visualise how the end product will be

  • Quality Assurance Testing

Improve how the game feels, remove bugs and finalise art assets

  • Polish

Ensuring the game is as perfect as possible before handing it over to you

Upon the completion of the game we go into the Publication phase, where we help you to distribute the game on to their platforms and monitor that it continues to work as intended.

We also ensure that the marketing pages for your product are optimal and will catch your audience’s eye.

Of course if your game is not going to be publicly available we will not release it on these platforms but we will ensure it works on all devices that it is needed on.

Once your game is accessible by you and your audience we will then move into the Support phase. Mini Mammoth Games provides on-going support for your product for the following 6 months after completion. This ensures a smooth release, distribution and user experience for you and your audience.

The on-going support allows us to:

  • Fix and remove bugs
  • Amend product breaking corner cases
  • Meet the ever changing needs of the launch and distribution platforms
  • Continue to improve customer engagement with the product


To simplify it all, we create yet another tool to help engage with your audience; in this ever digital and online world it is important to update your methods and be on the cutting edge of interacting and engaging with your customers, clients and audience.If you want a more indepth read into our process and what each phase means, catch up to speed here: https://minimammothgames.com/ensuring-our-clients-get-what-they-need/

Just remember this world changes everyday and so does the way we are expected to engage and interact with our audience. One of the best ways to have an easy and self-promoting product is through the use of video games; creating something people will want to share and enjoy with others but will still educate your audience on your company’s vision and story. This is a strong visual medium that can be used to create any experience that you want, use this to your advantage and book a meeting with us to see exactly what you can get out of video games.

Contact us through our contact form or email us via contact@minimammothgames.com

Talk soon!

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Development Processess Industry

Ensuring Our Clients Get What They Need!

Ensuring Our Clients Get What They Need!

Over here at Mini Mammoth Games we create games and inspiring interactive experiences! Throughout this we will take you through our process of helping clients and potentially you to Discover, Develop and further engage with their target audience.

We have a simple 4 step process to ensure that you can be comfortable and confident that the product and tool you receive will be a) what you need, b) an experience that follows the values and vision of you and your company and c) something that you can be proud of helping to create; afterall we are here to help you entertain, educate and engage.

Discovery

Our Discovery process allows us to work with you to determine what interactive experience will benefit them and their goals the most. In order to achieve this we consult with you and help to make decisions fitting your goals and outcomes for the project. For example:

Is it to interact and build a stronger connection with your current customers?

Or to attract and gain new loyal and trusting customers?

Throughout this process we create 4 detailed and in depth documents talking about the method to build your product, as well as how and who it will engage with.

3 of the following documents are for the design, technical and aesthetic construction of your product, they are there so you can envision what the final product will look like. The 4th is an overview of the 3, with some more baseline managerial content to allow your decision makers to easily process and decide the best path forward.

Product specific documents:

Game Design Document

  • Considered to be the ‘guiding vision’ of the project
  • Explain how the experience will play out, how the product feels to play (for example: smooth, clunky, floaty) and how users will interact with the project
  • This is the “method”, the instructions that tell you the process of creating the product
  • Taking accessibility into account can change the design of a project significantly and is important to cover within the pre-production documents
    • Accessibility covers a wide range of things from a different colour scheme for colour blind people to giving the option to rearrange the control mapping for keyboards or controllers
  • Outline any risks surrounding the project
    • Common risks for any project
    • Game specific due to your circumstances and needs
  • This will cover the development timeline
    • Will go into depth about the length of development milestones
    • When major mechanics will be completed
    • When the first pass of the artstyle is completed, so that you and the development team can start to see how the game will look once its complete

Technical Design Document

  • Related to the backend, it goes over the technicalities that create the backbone of your product
  • This document will also cover in depth the security of the project
    • Whether your product is intended to be used online or offline, it is important to ensure that it cannot be easily modified or hacked, especially if you are recording any data; personal or not
    •  
  • Optimisation of the project is important to ensure that users have a pleasant experience
    • This ensures that the project runs at an optimal frame rate, loading times are short and that users are not frustrated when interacting with the product

Art Bible

  • Determines what the aesthetic off the project will be
    • Helps with ensuring that it will visually appeal to the target audience
  • Ensures continuity and consistency in the art style
  • Informs artists working on the project about requirements and restrictions
    • Ensures that the artwork is high quality without reducing the optimisation
    • Ensures that the project is ‘user friendly’ and understandable to those who aren’t familiar with similar software
  • Makes sure that the Designers and Programmers understand the graphics requirements and how to integrate the art into the project

The 4th is called the Production Plan and will detail the costs, budgets, development timelines, as well as funding options and opportunities available.

These documents provide clients with a full and comprehensive plan that allow decision makers to pick the best path forward.

Development

In the previous phase we worked with the client to ensure that, on paper, the experience will meet all their goals and achieve the effect they were looking for. This phase focuses on putting those plans into action. We create their project whole cloth using our patented processes and supporting services. Throughout the development we keep the client up to date through the use of milestones and fortnightly meetings. This is our ‘Quality Quickly’ process, which focuses on rapid prototyping, iteration and target market feedback.

The milestones are:

Minimum viable product

  • Basic art is present with a simple version of all mechanics

Mechanically complete alpha

  • Still basic art, main art assets are completed and the full and complete version of mechanics are present.

Content complete beta

  • All mechanics and first pass of all assets, able to envision the whole experience from just this version

Quality assurance

  • Improve and remove bugs, get all final versions of art assets
  • Refine and perfect game feel

Polish

  • Ensuring the game is at its best state before the client receives it

This enables both us and the client to ensure that what we build and create for them continues to meet their needs.

Publication

Within the discovery phase we work to figure out which platforms the clients want to use and the best tools to reach their intended target audience. Once the game is built we release it to those platforms and continue to monitor it,  double checking that once downloaded it still works as intended.

We also ensure that the game’s presentation on each platform through marketing is at its best to entice the available audience to interact and play the game.

Support

Once we have helped our clients to design, create and publish the product, we get to the last phase of our services.

On-going support!

We offer this to clients to ensure that the game is well adjusted to issues and bugs that appear through intense use or unexpected platform changes. This is often due to the user base being noticeably larger than our testing base, allowing us to discover bugs and issues we never could have found in our QA phase. This will continue for 6 months after the game has been published to ensure that all bugs, issues and mistakes have been corrected, allowing our clients to gain as much benefit as possible from the product.

But to summarise, on-going support allows us to:

  • Bug fix
  • Amend product breaking corner cases
  • Meet the ever changing needs of the launch/distribution platform
  • Continue to improve customer engagement

This ensures a smooth release, distribution and user experience for our clients and their audience.

Our 4 step process ensures that clients are in control and involved for the whole creation process  of the product that we develop for them. Allowing them to adjust and keep up to date with any change in trends and necessities from their end and ours.

If you would like to learn more about our process and the benefits of an interactive engagement product, contact us at the following email and organise a meeting with one our wonderful designers!

contact@minimammothgames.com

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Development Processess Events

Gamescom 2023

Gamescom 2023

So we’re going (or went) to Gamescom!

Two years ago this would have felt like an impossibility, but hey, we’ve come a long way since then. When the email from IGEA came in, asking for interested parties to join the Australian stand, we talked it over internally and decided that not only would it be hugely beneficial as a company to attend, but we could actually afford it.

Given we’ve been focusing so much on Roving Rovers recently, between space events and the MOD. exhibition (more blog posts coming soon) that seemed like the logical choice to showcase, but we were going to keep a couple of mobile projects in our back pocket should the situation arise. 

Our goals were to raise awareness for the project to an international audience, and of course talk to publishers and investors in the hopes of securing further development and marketing funding. Thus began the process of building out a publisher pitch, practising it, refining it, practising some more, getting feedback, making changes and of course, even more practice. I’m pretty sure I can pitch you Roving Rovers in my sleep at this point.

With pitches perfected, flights finalised and accommodation arranged we were finally off to Germany. We left a few days prior to the event (Arriving Sunday evening for a Wednesday convention start) to give us a chance to get settled, and after nearly 30 hours of straight travel it was a good idea. We spent Monday getting settled and exploring the quaint village around our apartment, before heading to the venue Tuesday afternoon to check out the set up and catch up with the rest of the Australia crew.

 

The booth was still very much under construction at this point, but we were assured by the IGEA reps that everything would be set up come 9AM on Wednesday. The rest of the day was spent exploring Cologne’s downtown, highlights include the absolutely Massive cathedral and the bridge completely covered in locks.

 

Early evening was another trip to the convention space, looking much more finished now, to catch up with a fellow South Australian for dinner. Finally it was back to the apartment for an early night to rest up before three long days of convention going.

With definitely not a late night of development finished, we were off to the event! We had three people exhibiting Roving Rovers and the plan was two of us taking meetings with publishers/investors/other parties while the third person hangs around to show off the game to anyone walking past.

 

Coming from our previous experience exhibiting at events like PAX and AVcon, the business to business focus of Gamescom was definitely a different vibe. There were less people coming through the booth, but everyone that did was much more closely related to the industry and had interesting thoughts and opinions. While most of my day was spent running around meeting with people, I enjoyed the time hanging out with the game more than I have at any other event.

 

Meeting with publishers was an interesting experience, they were always very no-nonsense discussions which I appreciated. You’d sit down, run through the pre-planned pitch with them, show them/have them play the build if they were interested and then talk about the feasibility of working together. While some publishers were upfront that the game wouldn’t work for them for a number of reasons, the feedback was always helpful and quite a few were interested enough to want to talk further, so who knows what we’ll be announcing in the upcoming months 😉

After a very long three days we were finally done, with more than 20 meetings and ~100 people playing Roving Rovers at the booth, it was time to leave Germany behind (for now). But before further travels, a well earned day of rest and recuperation. While most of the team rested around our rented apartment, two of us spent a day out with some relatives who happened to live nearby, visiting an old palace and one of the few surviving pre-WW2 villages (insert pictures).

 

Sunday morning it was time to say our farewells, with some members staying an extra week to explore Europe, the rest of us caught a train to Amsterdam for an extra night before our flight home Monday afternoon. After a gruelling 36 hours of flight, especially with the beginning of con-flu starting to set in, we were finally back in Adelaide, and back to work after a couple of days rest.

So, now all is said and done, how was our first Gamescom?

It was an amazing experience, just to see something so huge, especially compared to events in Australia. Getting to talk to people from all over the world and from all sizes of companies was a wonderful experience. It was originally quite stressful, but over time the meetings and pitches got less and less scary. I’m hoping we’ll be there again next year, with a far more polished and better funded demo on display.

 

If any future devs are reading this, planning their own potential trip to Cologne, it’s definitely worth it. If you’re going to look for publishing and investment, practise your pitch until you know it by memory, and go in with an open mind. 

 

A huge thankyou to IGEA for arranging the booth and giving us the chance to attend, and SAFC and InvestSA for supporting us both financially and with pitching training, advice, support and all kinds of help before, during and after the event.

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Development Processess Events Prototypes

Roving Rovers: The Newest Experimental Space Simulator

Adelaide's Addition To The "Space Race"

As many of you may be aware, we at Mini Mammoth Games have been working on a lunar rover game alongside multiple universities and space companies. Working with a large group of Flinders students we were able to create a basic demo that allowed players to control a lunar rover and perform the same tasks that the Australian Rover Challengers would have to complete. During the event we received amazing feedback from a wide array of attendees. From children refusing to put down the controller, to students who are dreaming of working within the space industry.

After the completion of the 2022 Australian Rover Challenge Mini Mammoth and the Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources decided that Roving Rovers could continue to improve upon the first demo to help support the rover challenge and help to drive more interest into Australia’s growing space industry. So back to the screens we went, updating rovers for a fun and unique, but definitely not realistic rover to bring a bit more personality to the game. This also allowed us to create a mascot to help drive interest and emotional investment into Roving Rovers. This mascot became known as Brum, a fun and personable rover reminiscent of a bug. This next version of RR was taken to the 14th Space Forum in 2022, this allowed us, for the first time, to really reach into and have a look at the current state of the space industry and how it is evolving.

2023 rolls around and we spy another Australian Rover Challenge, this time we had focused hard on allowing the players to both choose pre-made rovers (one being the Adelaide Uni teams rover) and the option to modify and create your own version of Brum. This was a favourite section for many players, especially the ability to play as the rovers they’re watching compete. Furthermore we updated all the tasks to realistically resemble what the challenge’s tasks are. Which was also a big draw for the challenge teams as well, many came over to have a look and see just how similar it was and allowed other team members to be in control of the rover.

If you’re in Adelaide during the month of September 2023 make sure to stop by the MOD museum to play our demo for FREE during the exhibition! If you’re here specifically here on the 1st of September grab a FREE ticket from our Eventbrite page and celebrate the opening of our exhibition!

Meet The Team

Although the team for Roving Rovers includes those outside of Mini Mammoth Games, here are the Leads that will be ensuring it’s success!

Adding on the rest of the Mini Mammoth, our combined skills will allow us to achieve anything we wish for Roving Rovers!

What's On For The Future

In July we attended Avcon and allowed visitors to try out a demo of Roving Rovers, if you want to read more on that check out our blog!

In the rest of the coming year we will be showcasing Roving Rovers at every potential opportunity, these include many upcoming conventions! The first being Gamescom in August, then South by Southwest and the Melbourne International Games Week marathon. These are great opportunities for us to showcase our current prototype as we will be updating Roving Rovers over the course of the rest of this year. With many new opportunities for our community to have a tasting of Roving Rovers’ potential! So we look forward to seeing the rest of what South Australia will be showcasing at these events.

Roving Rovers has been a great opportunity for Mini Mammoth Games and we are very excited to see where it leads us in the future, furthermore we are excited to see what you are able to achieve with Roving Rovers! 

A demo with the chance of completely making your rover from scratch; want only wheels? Sure, go ahead. Want three sets of wheels? Sure, you can do that! No ability to actually perform any tasks? Well, we can’t stop you, I guess. Where is it now? You ask, well, find out through our socials, but you might be seeing us pop up at all sorts of events, games? Space? Small business? Keep your eyes peeled and you might just catch a glimpse of us.

Want to test the current demo?

Download

Want to keep up to date? Join the Roving Rovers mailing list here:

Mailing List

Or join our discord server, subreddit or follow our other socials for any and all updates!!

Linktree

See you on our journey!

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Development Processess Prototypes

First Prototype Week of 2022

We started 2022 diving straight into client work, since finishing those we have finally done our first run of prototypes. We have created a range of games spanning from drawing to a card dungeon crawler.
A quick run down of our games can be found below!

Card Crawler

“Play cards in a mystical ruined temple to speed through obstacles and debris, collecting new skills and building your deck as you travel.”

 

We wanted to take inspiration from the TCG space from games like Yu-Gi-Oh and Magik. We love playing these games in general so turning something similar into a virtual experience was definitely a fun experience for us. I really loved making the Level system, I just quite enjoy making systems that work in the background of everything else.

The shader effects on the cards was also a really fun exercise to explore the art side of things as a designer. Getting the metal esc look of the cards and rainbow effects was awesome!

We faced some challenges trying to get a cohesive setup and wrap up each individual system so they worked well together. Most of the straight systems when tested by themselves worked however some features like required cards for levels didn’t come into play until the very end of the development cycle.

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Donut io: Shoot Race Collect

“Donut Game is a pvp King of the Hill styled game.

Collect Ingredients to level up your donut and increase in size.

Hunt down the leader of your world to take the top spot and become king 

Destroy other players to plunder their ingredients to take for yourself.”

We wanted to create a multiplayer hyper casual game that’s accessible to all, so we looked at pre-existing ones in the market and saw mostly battle royale games and .io games so we decided to create a more generic multiplayer game to start off with that could change into either. We ended up going with the .io approach since it was the easiest to accomplish whilst having very minimal limitations. Also we just like the idea of donuts fighting….soo we went with it.

For the art style we went with a more low poly cartoon style since we already had pre-existing packs available and we knew that the major pieces that we needed wouldn’t take long to create “The Donut”.

The major challenge for the project that we faced would be with multiplayer. Since it’s a new system that we are trying to integrate with our pre existing workflows and processes. Also it just had a lot of problems with syncing between users.

Ocean Harvest

“Charm fishy friends in this frantic underwater drawing game”

 Using ocean harvest assets saved a lot of time and gave us high quality, cohesive assets to use. Plop’s design lends well to being dragged around and using rigid bodies to be “floppy”.

The most important and most difficult part of Ocean Party was the shape recognition algorithm. We implemented a basic system based upon the $1 Unistroke Recognizer modified to be easier to work with in Unity which was modified numerous times over the game’s development to work better with the shapes and other systems. The main challenge was ensuring that the algorithm could accurately detect the shapes, even when the player’s drawing was not accurate. This required a lot of fine tuning to the templates used for comparison and adjusting some of the values put into the algorithm.

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After prototype runs we do some marketing campaigns to find out whether these games have any viability regardless of if they do or don't follow current trends. Fingers crossed we get a smash hit!

Categories
Development Processess

Ocean Harvest

Mini Mammoth's adventure into the Arcade Idle genre through Ocean Harvest!

Hi everyone, I am a developer and project manager with Mini Mammoth Games.If you didn’t already know, Mini Mammoth creates games for the Hyper Casual Space, and we love to explore new genres and ideas. Our current focus is Ocean Harvest, an arcade idle starring Big Oss, a loveable fellow pondering about in the depths looking for renewable resources to ship home to the surface. Ocean Harvest is a fun game where the player explores the depths of the ocean, unlocking new places with the resources they harvest. Everywhere in Ocean Harvest is unique and handcrafted, with an eye towards making each space surprising and fun.

Ocean Harvest is built in conjunction with Homa Games, a French based publisher. We developed the idea during their Homa Jam, an arcade idle focused game jam they ran in the middle of 2021. We were excited to put together something ocean themed with lots of fun colours and ideas thrown about. Our first pass on Ocean Harvest was completed in about a week. Hexagon tiles, farming robots and domed farms were everywhere. Oss was able to stagger about on a coral strewn, sandy sea floor sowing and harvesting kelp, fish, salvage and minerals. With our first pass completed it was clear we had stumbled onto something special when Homa announced Ocean Harvest as their developer favourite in their Jam Awards.

After that announcement, we had to focus down on the core of Ocean Harvest. Analytics for our product showed that people were interested in the ideas of Ocean Harvest, but that its current implementation was driving them away after 6 about 6 minutes of play. We audited the game and development process, and came back to the project fresh with a better understanding of the core loop. The audit process involves repeated play sessions and feedback sessions on the current build, followed by group sessions where we discussed the implementation. It’s a more focused post mortem that takes place over a week rather than one meeting. 

 

When we finished our audit it was clear that Ocean Harvest is all about exploration. Everything in the product has to lean back into that moment of discovery. New tiles come with new opportunities to find new resources, upgrades and buffs. The environment is focused on being different every hex you discover. Our second pass dramatically improved on these aspects and we started to hone in on key problems. Performance became a priority as well as level design and interaction loops. The process of iteration accelerated and we started planning month sprints around this new version of our loveable game. We ran a first pass on the harvesting and environment in our first sprint, pulling out pre bought assets, changing the layout and path process for tiles and updating a lot of the initial mechanics around buying hexes. We even got a first pass completed on a mini map, though it was far from perfect. Our next sprint continued to focus on performance. We ripped out even more pre bought assets, switched camera angles and switched our target fps. Suddenly, Ocean Harvest stopped making phones so hot you couldn’t hold them, and it looked better as well. More work continued in updating how SUCCs (our automated robot assistants) engaged with the player and their work, giving them emotes and interactions with the player. We even have a first pass on a tutorial completed, so that new players get walked through the game by a gorgeous little octopus nicknamed Plop. That’s where you find us.

We have just wrapped up our second sprint, and the changes that are coming to Ocean Harvest are so dramatic that the game is barely recognisable. Everything from performance to the basic interactions has had a dramatic upgrade. Mini games abound, lootable chests can be found everywhere and you have a direct role in cleaning the ocean and creating a more sustainable future for the seabed. We hope to see you all in our newest update, and that you love it! 

iOS App Store download button
Android Google Play Store download button

We have just wrapped up our second sprint, and the changes that are coming to Ocean Harvest are so dramatic that the game is barely recognisable. Everything from performance to the basic interactions has had a dramatic upgrade. Mini games abound, lootable chests can be found everywhere and you have a direct role in cleaning the ocean and creating a more sustainable future for the seabed. We hope to see you all in our newest update, and that you love it!