Tag: Flinders University

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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!

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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.

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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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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!

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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?

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

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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!