Fighting against the many unscheduled maintenance and system downtimes in production as the production manager of a Mars Rover factory: This scenario awaits players in the online game igumania. You get support from Rusty, the loyal robot assistant, and Dave, the igus employee from technical sales, whose visit is the starting signal for the joint success story with motion plastics. Various igus products can be installed over the course of the game: iglidur plain bearings, energy chains, flexible chainflex cables, drylin linear and drive technology and even complete low-cost automation solutions such as the ReBeL service robot. However, not all motion plastics solutions are available at the beginning. These can be unlocked during the course of the game via the technology tree of the igus laboratory. Players can also experience the real-virtual igus motion plastics show (IMPS) as an in-game trade fair and learn even more about the motion plastics products. By completing various tasks, further perks or advantages and products can be unlocked - whether e-chain recycling, expansion of the assembly line, acceleration of the assembly line, or the use of smart plastics for the automatic maintenance of the robots used.

From student project to business start-up

For the development of its own online game, igus got the Cologne Game Lab on its side - an institute at the Technical University of Cologne, whose student projects have already been awarded the German Computer Game Prize, among others. As part of their own igus student project, 10 student teams took on the challenge. The task: to develop a concept for an igus game within a week. The concept for "igumania" won and the winning team was awarded the contract to develop the game. What is special: The student project became a business idea, and so Arkadijs Gribacovs, Ethem Kurt and Leonard Liebler founded elads gbR for game development. The development of igumania is also continuing: after initial empirical values ​​have been collected and optimizations implemented, the launch of an app version for Android and iOS is also planned.

If you want to try the game yourself, you can register here.