We're proud to share that NAITEC Digital built Robo Raven and the Ancient Relics — a web-based educational game commissioned by the Australian eSafety Commissioner. The game is part of eSafety's Mighty Heroes series and has become the biggest launch and most popular educational resource in the Commissioner's history.
What Is the Game?
Robo Raven and the Ancient Relics is an online safety adventure designed for middle primary school students. Players work through five levels of challenges, each covering a core online safety topic:
- Responsibility — digital footprints and protecting personal information.
- Respect — respectful online relationships and the impact of cyberbullying.
- Body clues — recognising early warning signs when something feels unsafe online, and how to seek help.
- Investigation — critical thinking and media literacy, including identifying fake news and online scams.
A final level revises all topics. Each level takes roughly 15 minutes including classroom discussion, and requires no login — a deliberate design choice we'll get to below.
The Collaboration
This project brought together three specialist teams alongside the eSafety Commissioner:
- ThinkHQ — creative design, storyboarding, and visual direction.
- PeakXD — UX research conducted directly in schools with students and educators.
- NAITEC Digital — all development, engineering, and deployment, including hosting within government infrastructure (GovCMS SaaS).
The game was co-designed with educators, parents, and children, ensuring the content and interactions resonated with real classroom environments.
The Technical Build
The game is built with Angular and Ionic, giving us a clear path to multiple platforms from a single codebase. It was built as a Progressive Web App (PWA) — a decision driven by a real need: ensuring rural and remote Australian schools with limited or unreliable internet connectivity could still access the game. With PWA capabilities, the app loads efficiently, caches assets, and works reliably even in low-bandwidth environments.
We used Capacitor and Electron to keep the application future-proof — providing a straightforward route to native app stores and desktop deployment if required down the line.
Privacy by Design
One of the key architectural decisions was keeping all game state entirely in memory. There is no login, no account creation, and no data persisted between sessions. This was a deliberate choice — the game is used by children in classrooms, and we wanted to ensure that no school, student, or individual could ever be identified through the application. Progress lives only within a single play session, and nothing is stored or transmitted beyond that.
Built to Be Reused
We didn't just build a game — we built a set of reusable engines. Animations, sound management, and quiz logic are all architected as modular, component-based libraries that can be installed as packages into future educational projects. The quiz types themselves are component-driven, making it straightforward to add new levels or adapt the format for entirely different subject matter.
This approach means the investment in Robo Raven extends well beyond a single release. The underlying engines are designed to power future eSafety educational tools and beyond.
Hosting on Government Infrastructure
One of the more interesting engineering challenges was deployment. The eSafety Commissioner operates on an Azure environment without the budget for a dedicated Node server and Angular hosting setup. The existing infrastructure is GovCMS — a Drupal-based SaaS platform provided to Australian Government agencies.
So we adapted. The Angular Ionic build files were packaged as static assets and deployed within the GovCMS environment. It's not the conventional approach for hosting a single-page application, but it meant the game could live within the government's existing, already-funded infrastructure — no additional hosting costs, no separate environments to maintain, and full alignment with government IT policies.
Curriculum-Aligned and Classroom-Ready
The game is aligned to the Version 9 Australian Curriculum and eSafety's Best Practice Framework for Online Safety Education. It spans multiple key learning areas including Digital Technologies, Health and Physical Education, Humanities, English, and The Arts.
Alongside the game, the resource includes educator notes with over 60 classroom activity ideas, five student worksheets, a completion certificate, and a parent information sheet — everything a teacher needs to run a structured, supported lesson.
The game is compatible with interactive whiteboards, tablets, laptops, and computers, and was tested in real school environments, including rural schools, to validate performance and usability across the range of devices typically found in Australian classrooms.
The Impact
Since its launch, Robo Raven and the Ancient Relics has become the most popular educational resource the eSafety Commissioner has ever released. It's being used in classrooms across Australia, helping students develop the critical thinking and digital literacy skills they need to navigate the online world safely.
We're incredibly proud of this project — it represents exactly the kind of work we love doing at NAITEC Digital: technically rigorous, purpose-driven, and built to make a genuine difference.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Robo Raven and the Ancient Relics?
Robo Raven and the Ancient Relics is a web-based online safety game developed for the Australian eSafety Commissioner as part of the Mighty Heroes educational series. It teaches middle primary school students about digital safety topics including cyberbullying, privacy, critical thinking, and respectful online behaviour through interactive, game-based learning.
Who built the eSafety Commissioner's Robo Raven game?
The game was built by NAITEC Digital, an Australian digital agency based in Newcastle, NSW. NAITEC Digital was responsible for all development, engineering, and deployment. ThinkHQ provided creative design and storyboarding, and PeakXD conducted UX research in schools.
What technology is Robo Raven and the Ancient Relics built with?
The game is built with Angular and Ionic as a Progressive Web App (PWA). It uses Capacitor and Electron for cross-platform compatibility. The application is hosted on GovCMS, the Australian Government's Drupal-based SaaS platform, and stores no user data — all game state is kept entirely in memory to protect student privacy.
Can the game be played offline or in low-connectivity areas?
Yes. The game was built as a PWA specifically to support rural and remote Australian schools with limited internet connectivity. It caches assets efficiently and was tested in real school environments, including rural schools, to ensure reliable performance on typical classroom devices.
Is the game free to play?
Yes. Robo Raven and the Ancient Relics is completely free, requires no login or account creation, and is available at esafety.gov.au/esafetyrelics. It is compatible with interactive whiteboards, tablets, laptops, and computers with a minimum screen resolution of 1024x768.