Congratulations to IMD majors Kadan Knapp, Samuel Wiggins, and Daryn Rowse, along with Game Developers Club president Declan Scott, for winning First Place in the Game Jam at hackUMBC 2025! Competing against 35 teams, they created a game in just 24 hours based on the theme “ARCADE.”
The team shared their inspiration:
“We were mainly inspired by the Wikipedia disambiguation page for the word ‘arcade.’ We found a ridiculous acronym — Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission (ARCADE) — and combined it with the idea of being transported into an arcade machine. The result was a game where players pilot weather balloons to collect data before glitching their way out.”
Check out their award-winning game here: