The arcade is free, open to everyone, and you can pop in any time you like. Come and say hi!

Come along to one of our arcade days at The Ancient Priors to play fun multiplayer games, team up with your friends, experiment with some alternative controllers, and maybe discover a new game or two from the weirder side of independent developers’ brains.

Delight in striking visuals, colourful imagery, intuitive controls for a slice of Indie game fun.

Run by Jo Summers under the banner of ‘Press Fire to Win’, Pop Up Arcade has been running in various forms since 2014, as part of the Brighton Digital Festival, and alongside the Develop conference in Brighton. Jo also runs events around celebrating women’s work in games, and the Global Game Jam every year.

Expect fun, excitement, cooperation, betrayal, flashing lights, big buttons, beeps and boops, and the opportunity to discover some fun new games you might not have tried yet. We hope to see you there!

Enter into a synaesthetic world of swirling light and soothing spatial music that combines in a bioluminescent symphony, exploring the connective between individual collective consciousness, the environment and the biosphere. You are invited melt into the space, to stretch, relax and to give your body what it needs.

Deep by Owen Harris and Niki Smit
A breath controlled virtual reality experience that invites players to navigate through a serene and poetic underwater world. Movement is controlled by slow, deep diaphragmatic breathing which soothes and relieves anxiety in the player. Since 2016, research partners at the Games for Emotional and Mental Health Lab, Radboud University have conducted several studies demonstrating the efficacy of DEEP as an intervention tool for young people with anxiety, including: its role in long term efficacy in reducing anxiety and enhancing long term efficacy via a full randomised control trial, and its ability to reduce disruptive classroom behaviour in children with complex needs. The experience is now being applied to a range of conditions including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Long COVID and Functional Neurological Disorders.

Asymmetrically Distributed Hyper-Dynamism by Simon Wilkinson, BRiGHTBLACK
BRiGHTBLACK present a video game artwork about ADHD, a science fiction playable podcast built into a retro arcade cabinet, set within a dream, documenting a day on ADHD medication.

As the drug kicks in and the symptoms disappear one by one, the artists explore the comedic juxtaposition between an ADHD brain which finds itself in a world where it can thrive vs one where it is doomed to cause annoyance.

Please note: There are limited spaces available for a number of the virtual reality experiences. Sign up times will be available on the day. We recommend arriving early to avoid disappointment.

There will be an interactive panel discussion at 3.30pm – 5pm drawing on themes within the Embodied Realities exhibition. Full details here

Free entry.