Two NT entrepreneurs have used their real-world experience living and working in the outback to produce a northern Australian livestock simulator video game with global potential.
Story Kerry Sharp Image Pasture: The Livestock Simulator
It’s frenetic, chaotic, wildly unpredictable and pulsates with all the breakneck action of a northern cattle muster. This sums up Pasture: The Livestock Simulator – a creative triumph for two tech-savvy Darwinites taking their first foray into video game production.
Three years in the making, the inaugural version of Pasture officially launches onto the global video game domain in March. The game is the brainchild of Darwin’s fledgling Salty Games owners, Nathan Groves and Chas ‘CJ’ Cole, who wanted it to reflect the spirit and challenges of NT pastoral life. Its fast-paced on-screen action has multiple players across the internet working thousands of simulated cattle all thinking for themselves in real time. The objective is to drive huge mobs across open rangelands and between paddocks, by manipulating mustering choppers, bull-catchers, ATVs, motorbikes, horses and a blue heeler Hermann to guide the animals to better pasture or onto road trains. The game features “advanced photogrammetry scanning to provide an immersive and visually stunning player experience, and a unique herding algorithm that adds depth and realism by making each animal behave differently”.
Because of their remote Territory upbringing in families handling the laborious demands of cattle station life and remote bush roads maintenance, respectively, it’s hardly surprising that Katherine-born Nathan and Alice Springs-born ‘CJ’ met resistance when they announced they wanted to turn their youthful passion into a globally appealing business venture. Stinging barbs like “Get a real job,” and “Go and do a trade,” were the general gist of feedback.
Undeterred, they held tight to their dream and, in 2022, after many post-school years spent in less stimulating jobs, became partners in their NT-bred Salty Games venture and, inspired by hours spent playing farming-themed simulator games, began creating Pasture.
This story excerpt is from issue #165
Outback Magazine: Feb/Mar 2026
