Ms Ramlu said the opportunities provided by Dunedin’s New Zealand Centre of Digital Excellence (CODE) as well as securing a new project for a major social media company was the impetus to establish a studio in Dunedin.
"With this project, I thought, ‘oh, you know, there's enough funding here that we could roll out a studio at least for a few months, and then we can start to look at how we might fund the next game’."
"The ethos for Mad Carnival is games for everyone, joyful and beautiful games for anyone and everyone that are non-violent."
The team in Dunedin includes Roshan Nowshad, Nash Keniya and James Reed.
Technical artist Roshan Nowshad moved from Auckland to Dunedin for the opportunity at Mad Carnival.
Within the first few weeks of moving he had an opportunity to meet Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, "which was really cool".
As a technical artist he works alongside both programmers and artists, taking graphic art and transforming it into the correct code.
"So I need to know a bit of both, you know, so I don't just develop, like, just do coding, or just do art, I have to do a bit of both.
"It is like I am the bridge between those two people."
Game developer James Reed said his role included a lot of programming and building the game environment.
While technical programming skills were required, there were also creative aspects to the work as well.
"I just get a lot of satisfaction from making something like, here's the thing that I made and seeing other people playing it."
3D artist Nash Keniya said she made models for games.
"You have to learn a bit of the programme and the technical stuff, how it will look good and how it will perform in the chosen programme."
Having grown up in Dunedin before moving to study at Massey University it was nice to be back in her hometown, she said.
She enjoyed designing things and figuring out how that design would translate into the game environment.
"I enjoy the challenge of it."
