Game: MicroMash

 colourful arms pull an organism through water
  • Grades 4 - 12
  • Ages 8-10, 11-14, 14+

Be the last one standing!

Players must work together to move themselves, parts of an ancient organism, through a watery environment, while simultaneously battling each other to be the last arm standing. Use strategy and skill to outlast the other in order to set the course of evolution on Earth!

The Facts Behind the Game

Some form of “survival of the fittest” is not an uncommon element of competition in video games, but differs somewhat from “survival of the fittest” in the biological sense – that is, natural selection. In nature, natural selection acts on the differences in characteristics between individuals: those with competitive advantages will tend to leave behind more offspring; if those offspring inherit those advantages, they in turn may also leave behind more offspring; and so on. Over time, these inherited differences can alter the balance of characteristics within a population of living things, whether they be bacteria, bedbugs or birds: representing evolution in action.

The ROM Connection

a trilobite on shaky fractured stone beneath the letters ROMThe future Dawn of Life permanent gallery at the ROM will tell the story of life on Earth - from the origins of life to the origins of dinosaurs. It will showcase not only samples from Earth’s early history when life first started, but key fossils throughout the Earth’s history that reveal how life diversified over time and faced major crises. This gallery is essentially the ‘missing link’ between the Teck Suite of Galleries: Earth’s Treasures and the James and Louise Temerty Galleries of the Age of Dinosaurs on the second floor of the ROM.


What's a Game Jam?

At a ROM Game Jam, teams of developers spend a weekend at the ROM learning from collections and curators and using those ideas to build fun games inspired by the museum.  With only two days to research and create their games, the results can be weird, wacky, and downright wonderful!

MicroMash was created by Lee Tran, Brittney Oberfeld, Kimberly Koronya, and Mike Romaniak


Game Info

(Please note this game is only playable on a computer and is not optimized for mobile devices.)

# of players: 2-4

Platform: Windows

Controls: Xbox controller

To play:

  • Follow the "Go to the game" link and click "Download" to download the correct zip file for your system.
  • Extract the files to a folder on your computer.
  • Open the "MicroMash-x64" or "MicroMash-x86" folder.
  • Open "MicroMash.exe".

Screenshots:

team selection screen for 4 players to select their colour/team colourful disks pull an ancient organism through the water colourful disks combat with one another for survival the words "Ice Age" appear when the timer runs out and ends the game