About

The Arcademia project is a collection of games developed by students and staff at the University of Lincoln. These games are then showcased in the university's arcade machines for everyone to play.

History

The Research Arcade project was started in 2018 by Dr. Chris Headleand and Benjamim Williams. At the time, the project was called the Research Arcade and at this time there was only one game available to play on the arcade machine. The game was called "Adi's Maze Unlimited" and was developed by Benjamin Williams. This was made as a research project to collect data on the impact of gendered representation on player preferences.

In 2022, the project was renamed to Arcademia and was opened up to all students and staff at the University of Lincoln. The project turned into a game launcher where multiple games could be played on the arcade machine. However, the project was still in its early stages and there were only 2 games available to play. These games were "Adi's Maze Unlimited" and "Qong2" developed by Benjamin Williams. At this point in time the game launcher was hosted on a server in the School of Computer Science and ran using Chrome in kiosk mode on the arcade machines. This meant that games were developed using web technologies such as WebGL.

During the summer of 2024, this project was picked up by Matthew Freeman and the project was changed to a desktop launcher, self hosted on the arcade machines, in traditional arcade style. This meant that games could be developed using any technology that could run on a Windows machine.

This desktop launcher includes an updater as well as a game launcher both developed by Matthew Freeman based on the design of Benjamin Williams' "arcade-ui-kiosk" project. The game launcher will update all games stored on a central database and will allow the user to select a game to play. The game will then be launched in full screen mode and will be controlled using the arcade machine's control scheme.

Later on in 2024, one of the arcade machines was updated with a new design. This design was based on the original design of the arcade machines but were brought to life by adding colour. This re-design was lead by Matthew Freeman and Alex Dickinson. Which later on was funded by the School of Computer Science.

In January 2025, the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences funded the project to redesign the second arcade machine. This was also lead by Matthew Freeman and Alex Dickinson, with the design by Alex Dickinson.

Future

The future of the Arcademia project is to continue to develop games for the arcade machines. The project is open to all students and staff at the University of Lincoln and we are always looking for new games to add to the project. If you would like to submit a game to the project, please Contact Us and we will get back to you with more information.