Tag: Adelaide

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Industry

Our Placement Program: Cultivating the Future of Video games in South Australia

Our Placement Program: Cultivating the Future of Video games in South Australia

As students we didn’t quite get the opportunities we wanted with placements, but once we started Mini Mammoth Games we decided to change that! Come through and discover how we here at Mini Mammoth Games are cultivating the future talent of the South Australian games industry.

During our study at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment many of us founders were able to participate in their placement program, enabling us to go out and experience the opportunities of seeing how our skills could be applied to real life jobs. Unfortunately there weren’t many, if any, game development studios that opened their doors to placements; something that we found to be disappointing and didn’t feel relevant or productive.

Therefore when we sat down to create a placement program we focused on what we would have liked and benefited from. This enabled us to make a few decisions immediately as to what we should focus on:

  • Make a fun and unserious game
  • Full experience – design, development and distribution
  • Creating the marketing
  • Receiving and analysing the results of their marketing
  • Scope of projects

This worked out quite well and did help a lot with students’ understanding of scope, specifically for small hyper casual mobile games. This was something that we struggled with when we first started making games at MMG and is something that we have also noticed when working with placements.

Feel free to have a look at the games that the placements from 2023 made!

2023 Placement Games

With the program being a success at AIE we decided to increase our reach and extend the offer to other universities. Starting with our friends over at Flinders University, next was the University of Adelaide and last but not least; the University of South Australia.

This is also amongst the various work experience and one of placements from either high schools or other tertiary education institutes that we did not yet have much contact with.

Doing this allows us to have a constant rotation of placement groups throughout the entire year, enabling us to give valuable experience to as many students as possible.

One of our placements from Flinders University, Adam, had this to say about his experience with us:

“It was a rewarding journey, in which I was encouraged to experiment, learn, and have fun every step of the way. I am thankful to Mini Mammoth Games for the opportunity, continuous support, and mentorship. Being exposed to the entire development process, from pitch to launch, has given me confidence that I now have knowledge and skills to contribute to the video games industry.”

Through our ‘Quality, Quickly’ process we are able to get placements to experience the full scope of development and marketing. Once they have developed their game we get them to create both image and video creatives to help market their game over the course of a week. Once completed we then provide the results and analytics to the students, allowing them to see which creative attracted the viewer’s attention best and the reaction of players to their game.

Our goal is to make the video games industry more accessible in South Australia; with such a tight knit community it can often be intimidating and a little off putting to those trying to get their foot in the door.

If you’re interested in taking part as a placement or on behalf of your students, please email us through contact@minimammothgames.com or go through our contact form. Furthermore, we often take placements in groups as this allows them to work as a team with a designer, programmer and artist; a minimum of 3 but we do take larger groups if needed. We are open to working with those who can’t build a full group, however that will be determined on a case by case basis and depending on our current and schedule placements.

We will be continuing our placement program for the foreseeable future and we would love to help you and others become more prepared for the industry!

With our former and current placements giving us positive feedback we are intent on continuing this so that students can get the best opportunities available. We have partnered with multiple educational institutes to reach as many students as possible and will continue to reach out to more throughout the entire state.

Categories
Mammoths

Best Mammoth Representation: Video Game Edition

Best Mammoth Representation: Video Game Edition

Like many a person today, we tend to have mammoths constantly on the mind. This is only reinforced when they are also present in so many great video games. So here we are today to help determine which video game mammoth is actually the best, something that we assure you will be life changing.

But before we introduce our candidates we must go over the criteria!

  1. Is the main focus surrounding mammoths?
  2. Can you play as a mammoth?
  3. Is their size accurate to real life?
  4. Are they tough and formidable?
  5. Are they cute?
  6. Can you style the mammoth?
  7. Do the mammoths have a herd or any friends?
  8. Can you be their friend?

This will be tallied up into a score out of 8 and, of course, if there are any ties it is up to our objectively correct opinion as to which is or isn’t better than the other.

Below is a list of all the games that didn’t quite make the cut. These are great games, but their mammoths don’t compare to the 5 we will be talking about in just a bit.

Now with those games out the way we can go to the best of the best mammoth games.

Number 5!

Due to the age of this game, you cannot find an official digital download. Pre-owned is the best option; though you may need to have the correct console or a CD drive to play it.

Gameplay Video by WishingTikal:

Number 4!

Due to the age of this game, you cannot find an official digital download. Pre-owned is the best option; though you may need to have the correct console.

Gameplay video by WishingTikal:

Number 3!

Download from Steam

Gameplay video by Ludophiles:

Number 2!

Get on the Apple Apps Store here

Get on the Google Play Store here

Gameplay video by Gocalibergaming:

Number 1!

Download from Steam

Gameplay video by Ludophiles:

Thank you for getting this far and learning about the various Mammoth games that are available on the market, big and small.

Want more mammoth content? Look at the rest of our blog content and join our mailing list. This way you’ll befriend our very own mini mammoth, Herbert, and become part of the herd!

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Categories
Mammoths

Mammoth facts you didn’t see coming, because they’re extinct.

Mammoth facts you didn’t see coming, because they’re extinct.

One of the more unknown facts about mammoths is that they’re not actually around anymore. They became extinct 10,000 years ago, an unfortunate reality that we have accepted here at the mammoth HQ. But for your viewing pleasure only, we are here to satiate your need for mammoth facts and information to last the rest of your lifespan.

Your Welcome!

Mammoths are herbivores and graze the ground for food; similar to that of the modern cow!

There is more than one type of mammoth

  1. The Woolly Mammoth
  2. And the Steppe Mammoth

With the latter being the much larger sibling; weighing in at 7.2 metric tonnes and reaching a whopping 4m or 13ft tall

Our little friends the Woolly Mammoth come in at a mere 4.5 metric tonnes and 3m or 9ft tall; approximately the same size as our African Elephant friends

  • Remarkably, Woolly Mammoths are more closely related genetically to the smaller Asian Elephant

Mammoths lived in biomes known as the Steppe Tundra or the Mammoth Steppe

  • This used to be Earth’s most extensive biome; reaching from the west of Europe, across Eurasia and into North America
  • With a significant north-to-south reach as well, the Steppe Tundra reached from the arctic islands all the way to China
  • With the climate being cold and dry the Steppe Tundra was mostly large, flat and featureless grassland, covered in palatable grasses, herbs and willow shrubs
  • However during the winter months snow would cover a majority of the edible grasses and shrubs, making food scarce during this time
  • Though the Mammoths are the most recognised animals, there were many friends that also wandered this landscape; reindeer, muskox, woolly rhinoceros, steppe bison, brown bears, (cave) steppe-lion, scimitar cats, wolverines and wolves
  • It is believed that the extinction of the Mammoths was due to a combination of humans hunting them and the climate changing to be warmer and wetter; removing and changing the vegetation away from what Mammoths could consume

Due to this, fossils and mummified remains of the Steppe Bison suggested that the same happened to them

Woolly Mammoths and friends. Illustration by Maurico Antón via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_age_fauna_of_northern_Spain_-_Mauricio_Ant%C3%B3n.jpg

They also originated from the warmer African climate; before migrating north into Europe, Asia and North America

Similar to some winter dogs and animals, Woolly Mammoths also had two layers of fur

  • The longer top coat that could grow up to 90cm in length!
  • The shorter undercoat, which created a thick insulating layer
  • Mammoths displayed a range of coloured furs with orange as the most common; paleontological evidence suggest colours ranged from almost black to blonde were present within herds

Humans were also alive and hunting during the Mammoth’s reign and hunted them for food, fur and their bones; which were used to create strong buildings and huts

Due to living in harsh cold biomes many mammoths ended up being preserved and accidentally mummified; with the best being a female in her 50s named Buttercup (RIP)

Scientists are looking more into “reviving” extinct species including the Tasmanian Tiger and the Woolly Mammoth, 

  • This is a controversial experiment due to the significant change in environment and climate since they last wandered the earth

We welcome you to share these amazing facts with those around you and give a small thanks to those mammoths watching over you reading this blog.

Please check out our other mammoth blogs and become acquainted with our very own mini mammoth, Herbert. The best boy in this hemisphere!

If you would like to look at the autopsy photos of Buttercup follow the links below, small warning they are NSFW!

https://www.livescience.com/37042-image-gallery-stunning-mammoth-unearthed.html

https://www.livescience.com/48768-photos-mammoth-autopsy.html

 

Check out these websites for more info

https://a-z-animals.com/blog/10-incredible-woolly-mammoth-facts/

https://www.westberkshireheritage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Woolly-mammoth-fun-facts-sheet-online-version-2.pdf

https://www.livescience.com/56678-woolly-mammoth-facts.html

https://www.treehugger.com/woolly-mammoth-facts-5114029

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

Categories
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

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.

 

ModRover_01
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ModRover_21

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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Categories
Industry

Growing The Industry

Growing the Adelaide Games Scene

Hello everyone!

We think it is incredible when companies help to grow and support the growth, development and evolution of their industry. Here at Mini Mammoth Games we are trying to do exactly that despite still being a SME. We are actively supporting new devs, the growth and outreach of games and how they can be used as more than just entertainment every day we operate.

Before Mini Mammoth Games, our founders were all studying together and being offered occasional placements through our academy. While helpful, they were rarely doing explicit game development work and often the projects were in semi-adjacent fields instead. Although ultimately a bit disappointing, these placements did show us how variable our skills can be but just weren’t what many of us were wanting; a placement where we could build a game, from start to finish. Conception to distribution.

Unfortunately there weren’t any game specific placements available in the state, and from the founding of Mini Mammoth Games we set out to change that. Starting off with our old haunt, the Academy of Interactive Entertainment. It was a slow start, but eventually we had a revolving door of placement teams coming in and out and creating hyper casual mobile games in a pipeline that took them from the design and concept to marketing and release onto the Google Play Store.

With this in place we wanted to offer that chance to the full contingent of educational institutes in the state, but first we needed a small increase in our office size to accommodate the increasing demand. Flinders University and Adelaide University were eager to jump onto the opportunity to be able to find placements for their games students. With having work experience directly related to the industry it also gives students a leg up after graduating as they are able to ask staff here to be a reference for their resumes. We can then provide accurate feedback as to how they work in a studio environment and help to push them into the industry.

Aside from our work to help the learning and integration of new developers into this industry,  one of our goals as a company is to  grow the local industry. Our mission is to create memorable experiences that promote a positive impact in the world, and we are achieving that through our placement program, and within all aspects of Mini Mammoth Games. With our client and internal projects we aim to scale internally, so we hire on staff from our program. With the extra experience, they can then at minimum get a casual job working in the game industry. Best case scenario they get a permanent full or part-time job here with us. This is another area where we can further help our previous placements, providing them experience and portfolio work they can use to advance their career even if we aren’t positioned to support them long term at the time.

To extrapolate a little further, within our outreach and client work we are continuously talking to industries and companies whose involvement and use of games as an interactive medium has been minimal at best. Our aim with a majority of networking and outreach is to help those outside of the games industry see how an interactive experience can help them connect with their audiences in a more personal, educational and entertaining way. Something small and personal can often make a massive difference in the way they talk with their own customers, and in the big picture we can help a lot of people learn new, interesting things about the world.

This is only a quick look into what we do and try to achieve here at Mini Mammoth Games, but we hope that this not only inspires other developers to help upskill and support new developers, but also other companies. We can’t do everything ourselves and growing the industry here in Adelaide will benefit everyone in the long run.

So if you, or anyone you know is interested in participating in our program, or running your own, please reach out to contact@minimammothgames.com. We will be sure to get back to you as soon as we can!

Categories
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
Mammoths

Welcome To A World Of Herberts!

Welcome To A World Of Herberts!

As a small intro to this blog I’d like to introduce Herbert, our beloved and adorable Mini Mammoth ‘mascot’. Herbert has existed since the blossoming days of Mini Mammoth Games. To allow staff and supporters of us to also get to know Herbert we have created an array of ways for people to interact with him!

This initial idea was inspired by streamers and specifically twitch streamers and their use of custom emotes. This came as a way to easily help with announcements on our social media accounts, having a happy and celebrating mammoth sounded like a great way to help grab viewers attention. This also gives the Mini Mammoth brand a very recognisable character which can also be found snoozing within our logo.

Here are your basic emotes with multiple emotions to choose from:

If you want a little more spice to your emotes we have these fun ones to choose from:

The only place where you will currently be able to access and use these emotes will be on the Roving Rovers discord. Where you might find some extras that we haven’t shared here:

Discord

Thanks to everyone supporting us and Roving Rovers!

Find our socials here:

MMG Linktree

Find Roving Rovers’ here:

RR Linktree
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?

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!

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:

Steam

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

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