Pyramid Arcade is a compendium of games successfully funded through Kickstarter, utilising the pyramid game system, developed by Andrew and Kirstin Looney in 1988. This incarnation is a successfully funded Kickstarter project, but the system’s history goes back to a short story, later developed into a novel, written by designer Andrew Looney in 1987. Icehouse, which would later become part of 1991’s The Empty City, described a world obsessed with an imaginary board game using pyramid-shaped pieces. Looney’s friends were so inspired that together they made the game a reality. The original game rules were designed by John Cooper in 1988, and Looney’s wife, Kristin, set about publishing it. 100 hand-made games were produced in 1989 and further rules for different games continued to be developed.

Sold in different formats over the next two decades, the uniform part of the games remained the plastic pyramids in two different sizes. Gameplay arises from the way that the pyramids are laid out on a tabletop, moved to point in different directions, or laid on different sides, or swapped and collected during a game. Many layers of narrative are applied to the games and provide very diverse experiences of gameplay. As such they are a modern incarnation of a deck of cards, or a set of dice, where the pieces stand as ciphers for emergent gameplay. The pieces continue to be inspirational to game designers across the world and Pyramid Arcade was launched for their 20th anniversary to capitalise on this interest, a boxed set of 90 variously coloured pyramids, featuring 22 different playable games augmented with boards, tokens and cards.