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Events Industry

Daring Lunar Architecture: Could The Future Of Space Travel Come From Australia?

Daring Lunar Architecture: Could The Future Of Space Travel Come From Australia?

An inaugural Australian Space Architecture Challenge (ASAC) organised by the University of Adelaide’s Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources (ATCSR) encouraged architects to envision the future of humans on the moon; through hypothetical vehicles and habitats we are able to see what our future could be!

What is the Challenge?

The Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources (ATCSR) looks to bring together many industries including those of STEM fields and align them and many creative fields to come up with concepts that will both be realistic and comforting for those who may have to live there in the future.

This also aligns with the goals of the Australian Civil Space Strategy and the Moon to Mars initiative that aims to advance Australia’s position in the global space economy and deep space exploration and settlement.

Overview

Although based here in South Australia the competition was Nationwide and Australia did not disappoint with their response to this challenge. With the winner having their work showcased at the 75th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) held in Milan, Italy. The IAC will be coming to Sydney in 2025 and they plan to also attend and showcase next year’s winner there.

Despite this being the first ever ASAC, many Australians had no trouble showing a creative and realistic perspective on the future of habitation/colonies on the Moon. The Top 3 entries showcased creative yet entirely plausible solutions, with an honourable mention standing apart from other applicants through their big “what if” approach, choosing to look much further into the future of what our architecture might evolve into.

These entrants also considered the major psychological challenges that current research suggests to be a large factor we need to look into, with a strong approach to making the habitats as comfy and human-centred as possible.

ASAC has 6 jury members who chose the winners and the honourable mention:

  • Amit Srivastava  – Founder and Chair of ASAC // Head, Lunar Architecture, ATCSR
  • Urs Bette – Program Director, Master of Architecture, School of Architecture and Civil Engineering (ACE), University of Adelaide
  • Deborah Turnball – Chair of Psychology, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, UoA
  • Jonathon Dady – Artist in Residence, ATCSR
  • Enzo Ferraro – Senior Architect, Grieve Gillett Architects (GGA)
  • Sam Ximenes – CEO, Astroport Space Technologies, Australia
  • With their Space Architecture PhD student, Albert Rajkumar doing a lot of the behind the scenes work as the Coordinator for ASAC 2024
First Place

First place was given to the work titled “Happy Homesick” created by students Eric Luan, Claire Basso, Robert Cameron and JD Otto from University of Western Australia. With the jury describing their work as “a reminder that space exploration is not just about technical feasibility but necessity to create habitats that have a unique character,places that we can identify and develop a relationship with – places where we can feel home at” – Urs Bette

Although I did first recognise the similarities this piece held to Hobiton from Lord Of The Rings, it is very much a feasible piece centred around the needs of the humans right next to the functionality that is often the main focus of Space exploration and habitation.

Second Place

Second place was given to the work titled “Lunar Urbanism” by Bowen Yang and Yichan Wei from the University of Queensland. Johnnie Dady described their concept as “A very practical solution that gets the job done with available resources, in this case the hardware used for travel to the moon. The dynamic level variations are texturally interesting. The communication and presentation are compelling and the composition conveys the concept well.”

Third Place

Third place went to a work titled “Lunarium” by Ihab Shamseldin and Samer El Sayary from the University of Technology Sydney. “The modular system creates a launching pad for the experimental, inspiring communities of thinkers and tinkerers, limited in means but not imagination, to craft tailored outcomes with generic parts. This is modularity at its best.”, jury member Enzo Ferraro said.

Honourary Mention

And an honourary mention to Do Dang Quang Nguyen from the University of Adelaide for their work; “Alteon VII”. Described as a fun and creative combination of science and fiction.

The Importance of the Challenge for Australia

With the growth and interest in space travel and habitation continually growing worldwide, Australia aims to centre itself as a major player. With many space companies coming together to support this challenge, it only strengthens our place in the future of man living on the moon. Furthermore, with the launch of the EXTERRES Roseworthy Analogue in 2024 the support for research and testing within this area is ever growing.

Australia has a unique place in the space industry being so far from everything our land and expertise was needed to land the initial Astronauts on the Moon and we will continue to ensure that we are at the frontier of every space development!

With the winning entries being exhibited at the Space Architecture Symposium and Exhibition as part of the 75th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) it shows how creative and committed Australia and its people are to the future of space travel and living. The massive support that this inaugural ASAC has is incredible, with the below sponsors providing monetary and personal contributions:

  • Space Architecture Lab (SAL)
  • Grieve Gillett Architects
  • Astroport Space Technologies

Alongside theses other supporting partners include:

  • MMG
  • HEX
  • Arch_Manu

One last congrats to the winners and a hearty good job to all applicants. Furthermore, thanks to everyone especially the ASAC team and ATCSR for making this happen!

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Events Industry Prototypes

Our Interstate Adventure: PAX Aus 2024

Roving Rovers: PAX 2024 Expedition

With the impact that PAX can have for Indie Developers, it may be surprising to hear that we weren’t initially sure if we were going to attend this year’s convention; with a client’s project as our main focus it was initially hard to see how we would fit an interstate convention into our busy schedule. But we at Mini Mammoth Games are nothing if not a little stubborn, so as many are probably aware we did of course attend; we made it work no matter what!

(Ensuring it didn’t hinder our client and their project)

Despite our focus not being centred on our own projects, we always made some room for our much beloved Roving Rovers whenever we could; ensuring that we playtested the demo ahead of PAX Aus with the help of our friends over at AUSS (Adelaide Uni Space Society). They organised, marketed and ran a playtesting event a few weeks before ensuring we were able to make the demo playable and of course enjoyable on top of that!

Just another quick shout out to them, they are a great group and if you have any interest in space I would suggest keeping an eye on them and their achievements!

Furthermore, we have kept up a yearly tradition with the support of ATCSR (Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources) of bringing Roving Rovers to their annual Australian Rover Challenge (ARCH); which had allowed us earlier in the year to make drastic changes to how the game was played since PAX Aus 23! We made it more driven and less just playing around the mechanics in their concept stage; adding a mission system, story and more interaction with the environment than we previously had. Feedback from ARCH 24 had been that they enjoyed having a much clearer sense of direction, even if we hadn’t quite figured out how to make sure the rover wouldn’t consistently flip at any turn.

Like many Indie Developers the travel to and from interstate conventions may not be the most comfortable or simple; sort of. We chose to travel by road over to Melbourne to save on money and to ensure that all our hardware would get there and undamaged. We did thankfully get there with little difficulty and had some time to relax before having to bump in on Thursday and showcase on Friday.

With our arrival in Melbourne it was only a matter of time before thousands of people would be swarming into the expo hall and getting to see what Australia’s Indie Developers had been up to this past year; excited to see what they will be buying when they get back home!

We had a lot of fun talking about and showcasing Roving Rovers, especially with the chance to do so to a much larger audience than what we usually get with South Australian conventions. With a large number of SA Indie Devs getting interviewed, including some of our own devs; there was a much larger microscope on how big the games industry is becoming in South Australia, but also the country as a whole!

Now Mini Mammoth isn’t one to get all down, but despite not being able to work on Roving Rovers as much this year and not having the game in the state we wanted for PAX Aus 24; we still had many people telling us how much they enjoyed the game and how they are going to be keeping an eye on its development. This was a much needed uplift that many of our devs needed; due to this year being quite slow for us. The joy that you feel as a developer when you get to see in-person the amount of fun people have when playing your game is genuinely something you can’t get anywhere else, except for conventions. These events bring so much more to the industry here in Australia and a lot more passion back into Indie Developers who may have become burnt out the past few years.

On top of that, it was fantastic to be able to keep Roving Rovers fresh in the public’s mind and keep bringing it to multiple events so that the public can see it’s progress and how much it improves every time they play it! Attending these events enables the public who may have their social feeds swamped by all sorts of game content up to date on Roving Rovers and able to play and feel the progress themselves.

I will also take this time to give a shout out to April Benjamin and her company My Colourful Mind who attended and shared a booth with us! Her game, Taming Yore Dragon is a gorgeous game and deserves as much recognition as Roving Rovers!

You can find more information about Taming Yore Dragon here:

My Colourful Mind – Home

Enjoying your time at PAX Aus is a must and we didn’t miss out on that rule; with it being one of the best tools to create awareness and build hype around a project you’re working on, furthermore it’s also a great way to test your game to the max and find all the bugs!

With the whole of Melbourne International Games Week (MIGW), it is great to be able to connect with so many more amazing game devs from across Australia!

Now the biggest question that probably isn’t on your mind; are we going next year?

Of Course! We love attending, no matter how stressful it may be; Pax and all the other MIGW events are such a joy to attend and be a part of!

But for now continue to keep an eye out for any updates to Roving Rovers and Taming Yore Dragon, but also keep an eye out for next year’s Australian Rover Challenge, cause we will most certainly be there!

And maybe in a few surprising places too!

Roving Rovers: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2447240/Roving_Rovers/

Taming Yore Dragon: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3267650/Taming_Yore_Dragon/

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Events Industry

SAGE 2024

Roving Rovers at SAGE 2024!

Off of last year’s success the SAFC held another South Australian Games Exhibition over the course of 16th of Feb afternoon and the entirety of the following 17th. This was something we had waited a whole year for again, a space dedicated to just games and on top of that SAGE worked alongside the Fringe as well to make the event even better and bigger than the previous years.

And boy was it!

As we came into the start of 2024 we were continuing to work on our Rover Simulator alongside the ATCSR and Adelaide Uni in preparation for the upcoming Australian Rover Challenge in March and so we decided that SAGE was also a great opportunity to showcase Roving Rovers.

Throughout the Friday afternoon and following Saturday we had many people come up to our booth at SAGE because they find space to be very interesting, especially since Rovers being the main focus is an uncommon decision. So we had many people specifically interested in space come up and play Roving Rovers enjoying how the rovers are customisable and give more freedom to the player. They enjoyed being able to try what the minimum or maximum they could get away with when creating a bespoke rover.

Despite an implemented built-in tutorial for the rover builder and the overall game controls, many players would spend the whole allotted 10 minutes we provided each player, with players at some points actively finding just how much they could do before the game itself broke and had to be restarted.

I would also recommend that other developers who look for users to follow their socials or keep up to date with the game include a QR code in their setups. We had many visitors using their phones to open up our Linktree so they could look into Roving Rovers later on when they were back home.

Our CTO – Camryn Schriever – attended the networking get together on the Friday night after that afternoon of showcasing Roving Rovers to the public. He was able to catch up with many other developers who had just gone through the stress of setting up and showcasing a game all in one day.

Camryn described that event below:

“The SAFC hosted networking on Friday was a good opportunity to network with other local devs, and relax after a stressful day of setup and showing our game. I am very thankful for the opportunity SAGE presented us, and it’s always good to see local developers get the recognition they deserve.”

On top of Unwind, an SA developer get together, the community here in Adelaide is quite close and it’s lovely to come together and support each other and their projects. We would recommend that everyone in the industry or interested in joining should attend these events as they are a great way to network and get to know the industry and determine where you will fit in best.

With such positive reactions from many visitors it will definitely continue next year and I would expect it to be even more grand that what it was this year, especially since it was only SAGE’s 2nd time running. In 2023 it was something we were confident was going to continue, but didn’t expect it to attract as many visitors as it did this year, it’s fantastic to see the support that our local community and the wider SA has for the growing games industry!

It is definitely an event that is going to continue for years to come and will hopefully become a staple within the South Australian games industry; as an event that we all look forward to each year as a great way to bolster the industry and the confidence in our studios and upcoming talent.

Thank you to all who attended, either as a guest or as an exhibitor, thanks to the SAFC, Patrick and Phillip for keeping our industry connected and supportive. And thank you to Natacha for organising all the stall holders and keeping the event running. We thoroughly enjoyed this experience and can’t wait for it to be even bigger and better next year and to see the improvement on everyone’s projects and studios. Thank you for being an amazing industry and I hope South Australia can continue to show its strength in the coming years!!

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Events Industry

Australian Rover Challenge 2024: A Recollection

Australian Rover Challenge 2024: A Recollection

Ahh, another year, another Australian Rover Challenge (ARCh); every March many universities descend upon Adelaide from far and wide to attend and compete in ARCh. This year was no different and once again we were there to celebrate alongside the many teams in attendance. The talent we walked into while there was astronomical and it’s no wonder its such a popular event, bringing in hundreds of people each year with many schools making a trip yearly to see the teams and their rovers; and now us as well.

This is our 3rd year in attendance at ARCh and it is something we look forward to each year, with many from the public and the teams themselves checking out what we and Roving Rovers have been up to over the past year.

Join us in a short journey going through our involvement in ARCh 2024 and where you will find us now that it is all said and done!

This year we decided to shift the starting position of Roving Rovers, instead of being in the Shackleton Crater we were to the side and above a cliff leading down into the crater.

Furthermore we kept it so players were still able to enter the crater through the use of lava tubes. Enabling players to experience more interesting terrain while still staying true to the lunar experience.

In the interest of maintaining a spoiler free blog here I am simply going to list the next few updates below without giving away too much information.

  • Included the 2024 University of Adelaide rover
  • A new narrative with more environmental engagement
  • Updates to the control of the rover, making it a much easier and nicer experience for players

Overall we were able to update and improve Roving Rovers to be more entertaining and an easier experience for those who aren’t super familiar with games, especially driving based games.

As a bit of a late introduction, if you’re unsure what the Australian Rover Challenge is then I’ll give a quick explanation below.

Every year students at various Universities will create teams made up from various disciplines giving them all the knowledge of how to build and program a lunar rover. Teams can use and upgrade upon the design of the Rovers used in previous challenges or come up with a new design, though they have to follow some strict guidelines to follow. Teams are told about the different challenges and goals for the challenge so that they can practise and problem solve; making their rover the most efficient at various tasks.

A majority of the teams are from Australian Universities, however last year they had their first international team from Poland – Project Scorpio – and this year, the second from Bangladesh – Team Atlas – With both performing their national anthems for us at the ending ceremony!

For more in depth information go give their website (https://set.adelaide.edu.au/atcsr/australian-rover-challenge/) a quick visit, but the challenges they compete in are:

  • Post Landing Task
  • Excavation & Construction Task
  • Space Resources Task
  • Mapping & Autonomous Task

This year was even more grand than the last, especially at a new location. But the winners definitely deserved their places.

  • 1st place goes to Projekt Scorpio
  • 2nd place goes to Monash’s Nova Rover
  • 3rd place goes to UQ Space

It was great to see all the differences between rovers and all the progress that’s been made and the effort everyone has put into the event and the team’s dedication to their rovers.

Keep a close eye out and you might find a familiar rover appearing in Roving Rovers 👀👀.

With that being all said and done, how did Roving Rovers go at Arch?

Firstly, thankyou for asking and secondly it went fantastic!

Although there were less people just wandering through this year, we still had quite a few people coming and checking it out, including a few school groups. Roving Rovers is a great introduction to the Australian Rover Challenge for the younger audiences, as they are able to try out the different challenges before watching the teams attempt the challenges in real time. We also had many of the teams come through and check out the game, as most had heard of Roving Rovers but never tested or watched any gameplay and so this was their first time playing or watching their teammates play.

As stated above we also had a digital version of the University of Adelaide’s rover and many; who had never controlled their own rover, were absolutely thrilled to be able to finally manoeuvre and attempt the challenge for themselves with their own rover.

Overall the experience was fantastic as always and it’s great to support all the hardwork and dedication that all the teams have put into their Rovers. We are looking forward to next year and are eager to see who takes the trophy in 2025!

You can find Roving Rovers HERE 

And can keep up to date with its development through multiple channels!

Catch ya on the lunar side!

Categories
Events Industry Prototypes

Exhibiting At THE Museum of Discovery

Roving Rovers at the Museum of Discovery

As many of you have heard, here at Mini Mammoth Games we have a Hard Sci-fi lunar management sim under development, Roving Rovers! In December of 2022 we introduced ourselves to Lisa Bailey from the University of South Australia who runs the MOD. Which opened up a great opportunity we had been looking for, a month long exhibition for the public. This would not only open Roving Rovers up to being played by many different people, but also allow us to get first hand feedback and analytics to help guide on-going development.

With an exciting month-long exhibition ahead of us we thought it was only fitting to host a Launch Party. We could then celebrate the wider games industry,as well as connect with space industry professionals from across the state. With the help of the MOD staff we were able to pull off a great night, with an excellent spread of food and drink choices in the very comfortable and welcoming Gould Gallery.

The night went off without a hitch, everyone was able to find the Gallery and we filled most of the main hall., With our game accessible in an adjacent room, everyone was able to mingle and see what the fuss was all about. We were also blessed to have some great speakers that talked about the idea and conception of Roving Rovers. Thank you to Cameron Mackness from Flinders University, Andreas Antoniades from Saber Astronautics and John Culton from the Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources (ATCSR). Their endless support of Mini Mammoth Games and Roving Rovers has been a big help with the project and its development so far.

At the exhibition we decided to show off multiple versions of Roving Rovers, showing how the game has evolved over its development . Starting in late 2021 alongside Flinders University and some of their students, we were able to create a small but enjoyable demo that did an ok job at showcasing the 2022 Australian Rover Challenge. With such a welcoming and encouraging response to the demo we decided to continue to develop Roving Rovers further and so we prepared an update for the Space Forum event later that year. In 2023 we once again worked with (ATCSR) to create a more accurate rover demo while adding in some of the participating team’s rovers used in the physical challenge.

All of these versions of the game were available to play with at our exhibition, as well as a few posters providing context as to why there were multiple versions of the same game and explaining the history of the project. We were also allowed to have Mini Mammoth Games staff members manning the exhibition and working from the space, allowing those who visited to ask more in depth questions and learn more about it’s on-going development.

Alongside multiple builds of Roving Rovers we were tracking analytics from the most recent build. These were also displayed  to those who visited the exhibit. We used this event as a way to see how players engage and interact with the rover builder to complete various terrain challenges. With the exhibition open to the public for 20 days we had a staggering 649 sessions, over 61 hours of total playtime with an average of 5 minutes and 45 seconds per player. We did have someone play for a total time of 53 minutes, more than 10 times longer than the average. Players who did play for an extended amount of time enjoyed the rover builder the most and would spend a large portion of their time fiddling with the designs.

 

Having developers present allowed us to also observe how players would interact with the game between the various builds. From our observations players really enjoyed the rover builder, but wished to have more firm directions/quests like the 2 Australian Rover Challenge builds had.

Our experience with the MOD was fantastic and with over 600 distinct sessions of Roving Rovers it was effective at reaching a large audience. Furthermore, with the MOD allowing developers to work there during its opening hours we were also able to interact and watch those who played the game, which expedited our feedback process.

We would like to thank the MOD. for inviting us to use their space, and all the help and support they provided over the month we were set up there. It was an invaluable experience and we would highly recommend it to any developers given the opportunity.

Thank you to everyone who helped us get to this point and we appreciate all the support!

Click on the buttons bellow to keep up to date and to learn more about Roving Rovers!

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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.

Categories
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?

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

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

See you on our journey!

Categories
Events

Avcon 2023

Avcon 2023

In a good stroke of luck our application to avcon was accepted and we decided to showcase Roving Rovers. This was an exciting start to the now continuous conventions that will crowd the rest of our calendar. Although we had only a week’s notice we had already had our fair share of conventions so we were prepared to take on the task of getting everything ready.

Preparation

Now to prepare for the convention Mini Mammoth focuses on 3 main aspects, these being: the game itself, marketing collateral and a little bit of merch to spice things up.

Now thankfully we had already built a player ready demo thanks to the Space Forum last year, but we still had the other 2 to take care of.

 

  1. For the marketing collateral we had 2 assets to create and order; a 2m tall pull-up banner and a smaller table top banner. Both showing off Roving Rovers but the smaller held a QR code to easily allow visitors to sign up to our mailing list.
  2. In regards to the merch we brought along a myriad of collectables; badges, stickers and some cards. The first 2 served the same purpose, to help spread awareness of Mini Mammoth Games and Roving Rovers. This meant that we had to create multiple designs for each, which we will show you below:

Will just like to shamelessly promote the fact that we made the badges ourselves, from design to actually hand pressing them together with a manual machine. This took a lot of time, but saved us a ton of money, though that was only because we knew someone with the manual machine beforehand.

 

The cards we designed to help visitors with easy access to everything Roving Rovers, this means the game, our socials, any community forums and so on and so forth.

Exhibiting!

With Avcon being at the convention centre it meant that there was plenty of (paid) parking around and underneath which meant that we didn’t have to haul everything from a distance. Though we will suggest making sure you have a trolley if you are bringing more than one trip’s worth of things. We had 2 trips to get everything inside however that was with us holding on to more than what we should have been comfortable holding. Including this it still only took me and 1 other approximately an hour to set everything up and have a short tour of the rest of the venue to see what other stalls were looking like.

Both Saturday and Sunday were an excellent experience for our staff and placements alike, we had offered them the opportunity to allow them to gain more experience within the industry that would otherwise be unknown without becoming an indie developer.

Avcon was a fantastic experience for us to get Roving Rovers out there and get real feedback from players. It was great seeing all the talented cosplayers, artists and other game developers from South Australia.” – Tyler (Programming Director)

Thank you to everyone who attended Avcon and especially those who came to the indie games room as this is one of the few conventions that help to lift up the indie developers within South Australia. Furthermore this was a great way to show off Roving Rovers to the wider Australian community as this was a project that had mostly stayed within the space industry till now.

Conclusion

While we are lucky to be able to attend Avcon at such short notice, it still was a last minute push to get everything ready on time. Thankfully we had a small break before client work was set to start the week after, this being the main reason we were able to successfully prepare.

If you aren’t interested or unable to exhibit at Avcon we would still highly recommend attending as a visitor, however this was a great way to experience exhibiting a game for the first time.

Overall Avcon is a great convention to attend and helps to support a wide range of small and independent businesses from South Australia. We had a great time and apart from the last minute rush it was a rather chill time to prepare for and attend. If you are an indie developer looking to attend here are our tips for attending conventions:

 

  1. If you plan to showcase a demo at conventions make sure to add marketing collateral or merch assets into your pipeline; so that they aren’t done last minute.
  2. If any of these items are to be printed by a third party make sure to leave at minimum a week for printing and delivery.
    1. Officeworks is our recommendation for pull-up banners
  3. Make sure to leave QA time for your demo so that visitors to your table don’t spend their time finding every bug.
    1. Have your demo accessible to the public so they can play it even if they miss out at the convention, this should be something that you advertise while you’re there!
  4. Make sure to have a set plan; this will help to remove a lot of stress and allow you to enjoy the experience more.

 

Thank you to everyone who attended and we look forward to seeing everyone’s faces in the future, whether at next year’s Avcon or other conventions that help to celebrate Australia’s talents!

If you would like to check out Roving Rovers follow this link:

And if you would like to stay up to date with its development sign up to our mailing list:

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Events

Melbourne International Games Week 2022

Melbourne International Games Week of 2022

This year Mini Mammoth Games was able to go to Melbourne International Games Week for the first time! We managed to make it to all four events and had an excellent time there, being able to interact with both South Australian developers and developers from across the country. It was an unforgettable experience.

Here is a short recap of our time!

GCAP

At GCAP our goal was to both increase our professional network, while also learning practical skills that can be applied in our day to day game developer work from the variety of talks and panels available. GCAP ended up being a great experience overall with lots of industry connections being made and a variety of talks on a diverse range of topics. Stand out talks and panels were: See That Mountain, You Can Climb It by Osama DorIas and the panel on Queer Games.

We hope to be back next year with more of our team members to learn even more.

AGDAs

Rounding out GCAP were the Australian Game Developer Awards. This was a great experience to see just how big the games industry is in Australia, and the amazing games from Australian developers over the last year. For us, It was also a great excuse to dress up and look fancy (insert photo) while taking advantage of the catered food and drink. Throughout the night we talked to and met different people, not just other developers but the IGEA representatives who helped keep everything orderly too. All in all, the night was fantastic and we are looking forward to returning next year!

Photo of 3 Mini Mammoth Games' staff members and another attendee at the 2022 AGDA awards night

Games For Change APAC

Asia Pacific Convention ran concurrently with GCAP and involved both a teachers summit and 2 days of panels from industry representatives. The summit had a diverse array of teaching representatives from Kindergarten teachers through to University Lectures and educators covering the gap. Between lectures from organisations such as Scienceworks to practical exercises that taught teachers how to teach through games, the first ever Games for Change Festival was a raging success. Each evening allowed Mini Mammoth Games developers to connect with different industry representatives in networking drinks, and we were even able to chat with the managing director of G4C, Arana Shapiro. She had us sold on their mission in moments, and now we are die hard G4C supporters!

PAX

Rounding out the week was the 3 days we spent exhibiting Idle Gangs at PAX! Our main goal here was to get as many people to play the game and provide feedback as possible, while also providing awareness of our brand. Pax proved a huge success in this regard as we estimate around 500 people played Idle gangs over the weekend. This provided us with invaluable feedback and we left with multiple pages of notes detailing ways to improve the game. Feedback covered everything from the speed through which players should progress through our tutorial, to fine detail about the way different effects should feel. PAX is single handedly responsible for the feedback that lead to our muggables being trampled for extra money. Sometimes, it’s all about the little things.

PAX also proved to be a great learning opportunity as our first exhibit at a convention. We realised very early on that we should have bought a dev machine with us so we could update the game each evening, fixing small bugs and providing us with a better way to exhibit the game. Next time we will be far better prepared!

Image of Mini Mammoth Games' booth at PAX 2022

Overall, we had a great time in Melbourne, travelling between venues and meeting a variety of people. Being able to meet developers from around Australia and learn from them was something that Mini Mammoth is looking forward to experiencing again next year!

Congrats to every developer and their achievements this year!

Categories
Events

Trans Awareness Week 2022

The Trans and Gender Non-Conforming Game Devs of Australia!

This might be the end of Trans Awareness Week around the world, however their creativity does not. Here are a wonderful selection of trans and gender non-conforming developers who are making a change in the Australian video game industry.

Jemma Hooper – Works under Arachnoid Flux
Jemma Hooper is a trans woman who has had more than 20 years experience in enterprise IT. Essentially this means that she’s skilled in a range of areas:

  • DevOps
  • Architecture
  • Project Management
  • Able to code
  • FMOD

She is also learning to use:

  • WWise
  • Unity (already knows c#)
  • Unreal
  • Godot
  • CryEngine

She is currently a freelance developer and is open to sound design and composing gigs within the video game industry. Although shorter gigs are better outside summer break due to study commitments.

You can find Jemma and her wonderful portfolio here:
Spotify
https://arachnoidflux.bandcamp.com/
https://twitch.tv/storygirl

Spiral Atlas

Spiral Atlas is a Perth based genderfluid developer focusing on gorgeous visual novels. They often focus on under-appreciated stories of LGBT+, Australian based fiction and physically disabled main characters.
Spiral Atlas is leading the way in creating diverse and unique visual novels in Australia and their unique and charming art style only heightens the player’s experience!

They also have a Regency Romance Cover Generator and it’s a good time!
https://spiralatlas.itch.io/regency-romance-cover-generator

You can find their work on their itch page:
https://spiralatlas.itch.io/

And can follow their twitter here:
https://twitter.com/spiral_atlas

This is the cover that I got when seeing what greatness the generator came up with!

Dr Hannah – Lumi

Dr Hannah Gunderman is the non-binary wellbeing researcher at Lumi Interactive, a Melbourne based studio.

Currently Lumi is working on a gorgeous game, Kinder World!

Kinder World is a free-to-play mobile game about houseplants, healing, and practising kindness. It’s part cosy game, part evidence-based wellbeing practice, built from the ground up to foster kindness to ourselves, each other, and the world around us. It’s available to download right now on Android and iOS!

You can download it here for Android:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.LumiInteractive.KinderWorldGreen&pli=1

And here for iOS:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kinder-world-houseplant-game/id1541796687

Check out Lumi Interactive, the amazing team and more about Kinder World here:

https://www.playkinderworld.com/

Erika Verkaaik

Erika is a Brisbane based game developer who has worked on a range of games. Many of which have been made entirely by themselves. They are heavily involved with the community in Brisbane and help to support and empower minority and underrepresented people in game dev.
You can check out their games here:
https://erikaverkaaik.com/

Check out their community work here:
https://twitter.com/SquigglyRiver
https://twitter.com/makingspacecoop

You can follow their twitter here:
https://twitter.com/erix_makes

These are only a small taste of what Australia has to offer, let alone those around the world!
Thank you for taking the big step into this industry and Mini Mammoth wishes everyone a lovely weekend!