Prepare your museum interactive brief
Work through content, hardware, accessibility and handover decisions, then adapt a printable acceptance worksheet with your team.
Use the commissioning checklist
Games & Digital Experiences for Museums
Touchscreen gallery interactives, mobile companion apps, and legacy exhibit modernisation for museums, galleries, and heritage sites. Our team has prior experience rebuilding The Great Fire of London for the Museum of London, and has delivered educational games for language preservation, navigation training, and vocabulary learning.
Why Museums Need Purpose-Built Digital Experiences
We help museums, galleries, and heritage organisations turn collections and stories into interactive experiences that educate visitors, extend engagement beyond the gallery, and are designed and tested for the agreed exhibit hardware and opening hours.
Gallery interactives need to fit your collections, visitors and exhibition space. We plan around the available hardware, unattended operation, accessibility, curatorial control and the staff who will maintain the installation. Procurement, funding milestones and content updates shape the scope from the outset.
We build purpose-made interactive experiences that do justice to your collections. Our team has prior experience with heritage and educational projects for institutions including the Museum of London, Cambridge University Press, and the BBC through previous employment, working alongside curators, historians, and pedagogical experts to ensure every interaction is accurate, accessible, and robust.
See our educational game development service for our full methodology, or our legacy modernisation service if you have an existing exhibit that needs updating.
Find the right way to work together
Kiosk or companion app?
See how gallery interactives and companion apps differ, and work out which one, or both, your visitors need.
Compare the two formatsSee it built for a museum
Read how we rebuilt the Great Fire of London interactive from legacy Flash to a modern HTML5 exhibit for the Museum of London.
Read the case study
Our Heritage & Institutional Experience
Projects delivered by our team at previous studios and agencies, bringing deep institutional and heritage sector experience to every engagement.
Research Consortium
Built for Museum & Heritage Requirements
Curator-Led Content Design
Your stories stay historically accurate. We work directly with your curators and subject matter experts so every interaction reflects your collection’s narrative, not a game designer’s interpretation.
Exhibit-Ready Hardware
Your installation runs reliably all day. We build for museum-grade kiosks, large touchscreens, and visitor mobile devices, tested for continuous 8+ hour daily operation without crashes or overheating.
All-Ages Accessibility
Every visitor can participate. From young children to elderly visitors, our experiences feature adjustable text, multi-language support, WCAG compliance, and physical accessibility options for diverse gallery audiences.
Grant-Friendly Procurement
Your funding requirements are met. We have delivered against EU grant frameworks and are familiar with Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England requirements, providing milestone reporting, impact metrics, and audit-ready documentation.
Preservation & Digitisation
Your collection reaches audiences beyond the gallery. We create digital companions that let remote visitors explore exhibits online, extending the lifespan and reach of temporary displays.
Legacy Experience Modernisation
Your existing interactives don’t become obsolete. We convert ageing Flash-based and outdated museum installations to modern HTML5 and Unity, as we did with the Great Fire of London for the Museum of London.
How We Work With Museums
Curatorial Workshop
We meet your curators, archivists, and education officers to understand the collection, the narrative you want to tell, and the visitor demographics you need to reach. The output is a content brief that both your curatorial team and our developers sign off on.
Concept & Prototype
We produce wireframes and a playable prototype that your team can test on actual gallery hardware. Curators review every content screen for accuracy before we move to full production.
Development & Hardware Testing
Full production in HTML5 or Unity, with ongoing testing on your target kiosk hardware, touchscreen panels, or visitor mobile devices. Accessibility audits run throughout, not just at the end.
Installation & Analytics
On-site installation, visitor analytics integration and staff training are scoped with your venue: hardware supply, network access and site logistics are agreed upfront, and can sit with your team or ours depending on what your venue needs. Where we run the training, your front-of-house team learns to restart, reset, and troubleshoot the installation without calling a developer.
Ongoing Support & Content Updates
Exhibitions change and collections rotate. Where that is part of the brief, we agree a maintenance plan that lets you update text, imagery, and languages without a full redevelopment cycle; it is a scoped, optional addition rather than an automatic inclusion.
Our Technology for Museum Installations
We choose the right technology for each project based on your hardware, budget, and long-term maintenance needs.
HTML5 / WebGL
Best for browser-based kiosk interactives, companion web apps, and projects that need to run without installation. Works on any device with a modern browser, including Chromebooks and managed kiosks. Smallest file size, easiest to update remotely.
Unity
Best for complex 3D exhibits, rich animations, and projects that may later deploy to mobile app stores or additional platforms. Offers the fullest feature set for immersive experiences. Larger file size but cross-platform from a single codebase.
Mobile (iOS & Android)
Best for companion apps visitors download before or during their visit. Supports offline functionality, push notifications for event updates, and post-visit engagement. Distributed via app stores or MDM for institutional devices.
Gallery Interactive or Companion App?
Most museum projects fall into one of two categories. Some need both. Here is how to decide.
Gallery Interactive (Kiosk / Touchscreen)
In-gallery engagement with a specific exhibit or collection
- ✓Runs on museum-owned hardware (kiosk PC, touchscreen panel, iPad in enclosure)
- ✓Designed for short, focused interactions (2–5 minutes per visitor)
- ✓Must survive thousands of daily touches and run for 8+ hours without intervention
- ✓HTML5 or Unity depending on complexity
Companion App (Mobile / Web)
Extended engagement before, during, and after the visit
- ✓Runs on the visitor’s own device (phone, tablet) or museum-loaned tablets
- ✓Designed for longer sessions: guided tours, scavenger hunts, deeper exploration
- ✓Extends engagement beyond the gallery with take-home content and post-visit features
- ✓Native app or progressive web app depending on feature requirements
Services for your project
Educational Game Development
Educational game development for publishers, universities, museums, charities and training organisations. Unity and browser-based serious games from a UK studio.
Explore serviceLegacy Game Modernisation
Upgrade older Unity projects or rebuild legacy games for modern platforms. UK engineers assess dependencies, preserve gameplay and plan a tested migration.
Explore serviceMobile Game Development
Mobile game development services for iOS and Android. UK-based Unity developers building new mobile games, porting existing titles, and improving live mobile projects.
Explore serviceUnity Game Development
Unity game development for studios, publishers and organisations. UK engineers taking gameplay, systems and technical delivery from prototype to release.
Explore serviceWhat Our Clients Say
“David is very patient and has great communication. He is an appropriately skilled freelance Unity developer who understood our project goals from the beginning and worked with us diligently throughout our slow-burn design process. I am pleased that we chose David to develop version 2.0 of our Vocab Builder. Thanks David!”
Project: Vocab Builder
If your project is primarily educational rather than heritage-focused, you may also want to explore our educational institutions page.
Planning an Interactive Museum or Heritage Experience?
Tell us about the story, collection or subject you want visitors to explore, where the experience will be used and what material already exists.
Tell Us About Your Project