We build next generation interactive digital experiences

We are a full service creative team with a talented network of designers, engineers, and strategists.

What we make

Games and applications using the latest rendering and interaction technologies, delivered to the browser, the in-app social media feed, the VR headset and the native mobile App Stores

Games
Interactive advertising
Real-time 3D
Playable in the browser

From concept to deployment

An open-source multiplayer card-battle engine released under Hidden Switch features a community-authored card library and is live at playspellsource.com.

The studio works through the entire process, developing gameplay, characters, locations, props and assets for everything from abstractly stylized to fully photoreal games.

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We push the envelope

A promotional virtual reality experience for Netflix's Wormwood that simulates in real time the experience of a bad psychedelic trip from the perspective of the show's subject, Frank Olson, who was murdered by his CIA handlers while experimenting with LSD.

We do photoreal

A realtime photoreal snow globe interactive promoting Participant's The Unknown Known, brought to mobile devices through Hidden Switch's experience streaming platform.

Rangers Wanted

Developed with Niantic for the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, this AR conservation game has Theodore Roosevelt deputize kids as rangers to rewild their own rooms and yards.

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Selected games

Spellsource, Monster Match, Minionate and Propaganda Tennis are a few of the studio's public games.

Outside of these public games, Hidden Switch has developed confidential games in photorealistic, real-time ray-traced styles.

2026 Spellsource An open-source multiplayer card-battle engine released under Hidden Switch features a community-authored card library and is live at playspellsource.com.

2024 Rangers Wanted Developed with Niantic for the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, this AR conservation game has Theodore Roosevelt deputize kids as rangers to rewild their own rooms and yards.

2022 Safari Par-Tee Created for the PGA of America, this augmented reality game for children transforms an ordinary room into a nine-hole golf course.

Playable 2019 Monster Match Funded by Mozilla's Creative Media Awards, this dating app for monsters shows players how recommendation algorithms narrow who they see.

Playable 2023 IONIQ 5 Virtual Test Drive Meta Creative Shop's flagship Infinite Window placement put a photoreal Hyundai IONIQ 5 test drive inside a browser tab.

Playable 2012 Did My Brother Invent E-Mail? Originally built and co-bylined for Errol Morris's New York Times series about his brother and the invention of electronic mail, this 1965 CTSS terminal has been restored here and is playable again.

Playable 2026 Propaganda Tennis A pixel-art swipe tennis game.

2015 The Baskerville Experiment A quiz on nytimes.com secretly tested whether a sentence's typeface affects its believability across New York Times readers, with Baskerville emerging as the most trusted. The findings were later published as Pentagram Paper 44.

2017 Hello, Operator! A time-management game played on a restored 1927 Western Electric switchboard wired to a computer, using a real handset alongside real patch cables and lamps.

2017 Minionate A collectible card game was designed and documented at the MIT Media Lab.

2022 NHL on Roblox An official NHL experience on Roblox, designed with Trigger XR in the spring of 2022 across five rounds of concept work, including new formats for two-on-two play.

All work

26 entries

Who is Hidden Switch?

James Gale

co-founder of AppMana

Engineer in Seattle and a co-founder of AppMana. He built the Spellsource server and client, and works on AppMana's client engagements. He also writes widely used open-source mods for Bloons TD 6.

Spellsource
Nolan Fabricius

illustrator and animator

Illustrator and animator in Los Angeles, working in animation production on Bob's Burgers. The pixel art in these games is his.

Monster Match Propaganda Tennis
Alexander Berman

filmmaker

Filmmaker. He directed App, Songs from the Tundra and The Volcano People, and writes for Hidden Switch games with Camille Stochitch.

Propaganda Tennis Monster Match Spellsource
Camille Stochitch

writer

Writer. She writes with Alexander Berman, on his films and on Hidden Switch games. The two of them guide the Spellsource community as it writes narratives around the game's main plots and characters.

Spellsource Monster Match Virtual High
Miguel Perez

designer and engineer, at Lovable

Designer and engineer, now at Lovable, previously at Meta, Spotify and Perkins&Will. He co-created Monster Match and was project lead and hive engineer on Holobiont Urbanism in the MIT Media Lab's Playful Systems group.

Monster Match Holobiont Urbanism
Gabe Donnay

composer

Composer. He wrote the music for Spellsource and Monster Match.

Spellsource Monster Match

More about the studio

Try our demos

Technology that ships

Hidden Switch specializes in end-user products that ship and scale to the widest possible audiences. Its demos run on the devices people already carry, over the connections they already have, with frictionless access and high fidelity inside native apps and mobile browsers.

You'll have fun

The studio stands by every interactive and delivers only experiences people enjoy, with a team of engineers, artists, writers and musicians behind each concept.

Two to play

Tap Drive and use touch to drive the car in the Hyundai Virtual Test Drive, an original design for a test drive experience. Propaganda Tennis is a hand-painted arcade game with a zombie mode.