The UK’s eight immersive studios to watch
Posted 2 Jul 2024
The UK’s eight immersive studios to watch
With ten years of experience accelerating the adoption of deep tech across the UK’s creative industries, Digital Catapult has long championed the role of startups in the immersive sector. Much has changed in the immersive space since our initial CreativeXR accelerator launched in 2017 to enable UK creative teams to experiment, iterate and bring immersive project ideas to reality.
As immersive content and experiences gain more traction in business and in wider society, and the technology itself continues to evolve, we have selected the eight UK immersive studios creating the most innovative content and experiences from our alumni network.
From creating groundbreaking augmented reality (AR) experiences and producing interactive virtual reality (VR) narratives, to working with international collaborators and showcasing their work at internationally recognised film festivals, here are the UK’s eight immersive studios to watch:
No Ghost
No Ghost is an Emmy award-winning creative animation studio that specialises in immersive media, working with the latest game engine technology to create custom AR and VR apps that deliver narratives and interactive experiences to a digital audience. As part of the Augmented Reality Accelerator programme powered by Niantic Lightship, No Ghost collaborated with Studio Wayne McGregor to encourage self-expression through movement with augmented reality. Before that, its VR adventure Madrid Noir, which features a meticulously detailed re-imagining of Spain’s capital, was part of the Official Selection for the Tribeca Film Festival in 2021 and was featured in the Cannes XR Marché du Film. Madrid Noir was also part of Digital Catapult and Arts Council England’s CreativeXR programme.
Megaverse
Megaverse is an interactive studio that draws upon theatre, film, gaming and the visual arts, pushing the creative potential of the latest extended reality (XR) technologies. The studio finds new ways to combine XR technologies with movement, interactivity and, crucially, storytelling to blend the boundaries of reality in novel ways. In 2024, Megaverse won a Broadcast Innovation Tech Award in the Best Use of Virtual Production/Studios category for the ‘Game Changers’ project that was initially developed as part of our CreativeXR programme, also winning a Game Republic Sustainability Award and featuring on-stage at Dutch Media Week by NVIDIA. Previously, Megaverse’s game ‘Arctic Escape’, was one of the first to use AR in a clinical setting, winning ‘Best App Design’ at The Design Week Awards 2020. ‘Arctic Escape’ is an augmented reality game designed for the Sheffield Children’s Hospital transforming the hospital into a virtual Arctic world that helps distract patients to reduce stress and anxiety around treatments.
BetaJester
BetaJester is an immersive experiences studio specialising in building games for console, mobile, virtual reality, and augmented reality. Working with visionaries from all sectors, its team are experts in realising otherworldly experiences. The studios’ recent work includes creating content for the wildly successful console game ‘Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield’; exploring Britain’s past with its own VR comedy-horror title ‘The Burning Room’, and combining modern technology with archaeological evidence to explore Hull in the 1600s with ‘By the Rising Tide of the Humber’.
Neurotech
Neurotech is a startup that brings solutions from engineering and high-tech industries to the fields of education and medicine. It develops augmented and mixed reality games for children aged 7-10 years old and has two flagship products: TalkbackVR, an educational tool for the classroom and home aimed at improving literacy and SeeForMyself, a multi-platform app encompassing mobile devices and VR headsets to help neurodiverse students access careers information, find a career they enjoy and experience a taste of that career in VR. Both of these products were designed for, and in collaboration with, neurodiverse students and are now in use in schools across the UK.
Mobile Pie
Mobile Pie is an award-winning games studio, focusing on games and entertainment for younger audiences. It works with entertainment clients and broadcasters including Aardman Animations, P2 Games, CBeebies, CBBC and Cartoon Network, creating titles that have entertained and educated millions of children around the world. Recent projects have included titles for BBC Bitesize, including the TIGA award-winning History Detectives, Ben 10: Super Hero Time on Roblox for Cartoon Network, and Horrid Henry’s Krazy Karts on the Nintendo Switch with P2 Games and Novel Entertainment. Together with Digital Catapult and Niantic, Mobile Pie created ‘ToonCup AR’, bringing Warner Bros. Discovery’s cartoon football game into the real world with augmented reality. The project was powered by Niantic’s Lightship Augmented Reality Developer Kit (ARDK), which lowers the barrier to entry for developers to create AR experiences that inspire movement, exploration and shared experiences.
Echobubbles
Echobubbles was founded in 2021 in response to COVID-19’s impact on the physical experiences and events industry. It builds online, bespoke worlds to create interactive and immersive experiences for individuals and companies who want to explore, play, socialise and learn. The company is currently supported by Cambridge Judge Business School, as a registered social venture committed to lowering carbon emissions through its productions.
Arcade XR
Arcade XR is a leading immersive experience agency that uses augmented reality to create more meaningful connections between people and the world around us. It has produced award-winning, three-dimensional storytelling for some of the world’s leading brands, and arts and culture institutions, including The National Gallery, Sky, Disney, England & Wales Cricket Board, and UK Parliament. Arcade uses technologies and platforms including computer vision, deep neural net machine learning, image and object recognition, Niantic Lightship, ARKit, ARCore, WebAR, Lens Studio, Unity, Unreal and to deliver their world-class immersive experiences. In 2023, Arcade created ‘Bazaar’, a digital game with real-world rewards around the UK’s high streets with Niantic’s Lightship features as part of our Augmented Reality Accelerator programme. Arcade previously worked with Digital Catapult and the MUNCH museum in Oslo to create a prototype AR crowd-sourced immersive experience inspired by Norway’s greatest artist, Edvard Munch, and his approach to art, to inspire children to get creative.
Peel X
Peel X is an award-winning XR studio. It brings the real and the virtual worlds together to seamlessly deliver unforgettable immersive experiences across tourism, retail, education, culture and the arts. Over the past decade, Peel X has grown into a visionary team at the forefront of digital storytelling, with a diverse portfolio of work that has achieved accolades including Visit England’s ‘Best Told Story’ Award, and includes groundbreaking projects like Uist Unearthed – the first AR trail app to deliver archaeological storytelling – which was recently featured in the British Museum.
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