Building The Mine is a kiosk-type digital game that has toured across grassroots Canada (even as far as the Arctic) as part of the traveling Great Canadian Mine Show exhibit. In the game you play a mining president about to direct the building of a new mine.

XFunc custom-built "BTM" to fit an unusual niche. On the one hand it had to give the user the sense of the overwhelming complexity - the sheer size - entailed in putting in a new mine (which requires an upfront minimum investment around $200 million). So it had to be a kind of "Mining Tycoon". However, it also had to: be accessible to general users (i.e. non-hardcore gamers); play to a conclusion in about six minutes; and be produced in a short period of time on a limited budget.

The resulting product is a fun look into the trials of implementing a new mining project. It brings the user immediately into the scenario, then asks for some key decisions. A final outcome occurs in an animation set 20 years in the future. There is a range of success from bankruptcy to "20% average annual growth", but there are no right answers as it all depends on the amount of risk the user is willing to take. The game essentially drives the experience (given the kiosk requirements), and thus we placed more emphasis on a vivid audio-visual experience.

Our experience in designing larger more intensive strategy games (such as Fire Zone) proved essential in allowing us to frame the project to be both an authentic game (i.e. not a "choose-your-own-adventure" pseudo-game), and deliverable on a limited timeframe and budget.

Building The Mine was sponsored by the Toronto Stock Exchange, Luscar Limited and SGI. Overall funding for The Great Canadian Mine Show was provided by major mining groups and companies, plus Canadian federal and provincial governments.

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