Category: Prototypes

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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/

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.

 

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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 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!!

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See you on our journey!

Categories
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!