How a Wellington Game Studio Gave Mini Motorways a Māori Name

14 October 2026

When Shalee Fitzsimmons was a 19-year-old design student, a grant application from her iwi asked how she would weave Māori culture into her work.

She thought it was a big question to put to a teenager. But she answered it, promising to represent her culture and iwi authentically. Years later, that promise has helped put te reo Māori in front of a global gaming audience.

Fitzsimmons (Ngāti Tūwharetoa) is head of art at Dinosaur Polo Club, the Wellington studio behind Mini Motorways. The minimalist road-building game, played by more than 9 million people, now has a full te reo Māori version and a new name: Rori Riki.

More than a language pack

The update launched during Te Wiki o te Reo Māori in September. It is available to players worldwide on platforms including Apple Arcade, Nintendo Switch and Steam, not just in New Zealand.

The game was translated by Kristin Smith of Kūwaha, a team that has localised games for other Aotearoa studios. Localisation means adapting a game for a new language and culture, which involves far more than swapping words.

Fitzsimmons says that difference mattered from the start.

"How do I make sure I'm not just putting a koru on a thing and using my whakapapa to legitimise it?" she said.

For her, authenticity meant not treating te reo as "a branding opportunity".

Where the challenges were

Work began around mid-2025, when the studio's marketing manager, Ben Emerson, contacted Kūwaha.

The early questions were practical: how many lines of text the game contained, how the structure of te reo would work inside a game, and whether any gameplay needed cultural consideration. Smaller details came up too, such as how dates are displayed and how language sits within the user interface.

Mini Motorways is known for its clean, sparse design, and that created one real challenge. Translators often don't see their text inside the game until late in the process, and some te reo translations turned out to be longer than the space allowed.

The studio worked with Smith to adjust either the wording or the visuals, keeping the meaning intact.

One example says a lot about the approach. Wellington in te reo is Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Rather than shorten the name, the team made the font size scale to fit it.

"That's more important," Fitzsimmons said.

Why Rori Riki

The studio didn't expect the game to be renamed. Being gifted Rori Riki by Smith was one of the most meaningful outcomes of the project.

Smith chose a common word, rori, paired with the less common riki. That mirrors how "mini" is a slightly unusual way of saying small in English. She wanted a name that reo speakers would understand immediately, with some alliteration to make it fun to say.

Co-founder Peter Curry says the studio does not take the honour lightly.

"The idea that Rori Riki might be someone's first encounter with te reo Māori, a language unique to our whenua, is incredibly meaningful to us," he said.

Changing the studio, not just the game

The work did not stop at the translation.

Dinosaur Polo Club has partnered with Ako Academy, a wāhine-owned Māori education provider in Wellington. The aim is for Ako to help the studio get started, so staff can eventually lead the work themselves.

Inside the studio, that has meant:

• weekly te reo lessons and te ao Māori workshops
• learning about Te Tiriti o Waitangi
• te reo emojis in the team's messaging platform
• a "mihi off", where staff practised their introductions together
• a Matariki potluck, with each person bringing a family dish and its story

Fitzsimmons calls these "little but meaningful steps".

Asked how the studio will keep this going beyond Te Wiki o te Reo Māori, she says it doesn't need business targets or a corporate push.

"We're an Aotearoa game studio. Home shapes who we are and what we make," she said.

A gift to players

Mini Motorways is now seven years old. Fitzsimmons says the te reo update was approached with manaakitanga, the Māori value of care and hospitality towards others.

She describes it as a gift to players "from our kāinga to theirs". Kāinga means home.

Among the first to benefit were tamariki at Ako Academy, who were given passes to play the te reo version on Nintendo Switch. The studio says reactions on its subreddit, Instagram and across New Zealand's game development community have been positive.

The studio has not said how many players have switched the game to te reo Māori so far.

A wider movement in New Zealand games

Fitzsimmons is quick to point out that Dinosaur Polo Club is not the first.

She names Maru Nihoniho's Metia Interactive, which has been bringing te reo and te ao Māori into games for years. She also names 4Phase Games, an iwi-led developer in Taranaki, and Atawhai Games in Dunedin.

Her advice to other developers wanting to do the same respectfully is simple: talk to the specialists, and start with Kūwaha.

She also sees a bigger picture. Māori efforts to revitalise te reo are, in her view, an example for Indigenous peoples worldwide.

What she hopes players take away

For an international player switching the game to te reo for the first time, Fitzsimmons hopes for something modest but lasting.

If they come away curious about Aotearoa, or recognising a few new words, "that feels like something really positive to us", she said.

The studio says it now thinks of localisation as part of the creative process, not a final step. The question for New Zealand's games industry is whether more studios follow, and whether te reo becomes a normal option in games made here rather than a special edition.

Images: Dinosaur Polo Club. Celebratory artwork by Huriana Kopeke-Te Aho.

Source: Written interview with Dinosaur Polo Club.