About Underwater Arcade Games

Our mission

Underwater Arcade Games exists to do one thing properly: publish a small number of original, genuinely enjoyable underwater arcade games, and write about them honestly.

That is a deliberately narrow mission. There is no shortage of sites that list thousands of embedded games with a paragraph of keyword-stuffed text each. We would rather have eight games we wrote ourselves, know inside out, and can document down to the spawn rate — because that is the only way the guides can be worth reading.

What you will find here

• Eight original HTML5 games. Written in canvas and plain JavaScript for this site. Free, no account, no download, no plugin. They run on desktop and on phones, and they work with a keyboard, a mouse or a thumb.
• Written guides. Control references, navigation technique, air management, exploration strategy and high-score breakdowns — each one written after playing the game, with figures taken from the game code.
• Articles about the genre. How underwater arcade games are built, which mechanics recur across them, and how the sub-genres differ.
• A game library with real filters. Sort by category, mechanic or recency, save favourites locally, and pick up where you left off.

Editorial philosophy

Three commitments shape everything published here.

Play before writing. No game is described from a specification. Every guide and every recommendation on this site comes from playing the game, usually far longer than writing about it takes.

Quote real numbers. When a guide says a multiplier caps at five or an air pocket restores 26%, that number is read from the source code, not estimated. If we cannot verify a figure, we describe the behaviour qualitatively instead of inventing precision.

Separate fiction from fact. An ocean theme naturally raises real questions about oceans, marine life and diving. Arcade mechanics are labelled as arcade mechanics, and real-world claims are sourced to published scientific or governmental bodies and linked. The fact-checking policy sets out the rule in full.

How games are selected

Every game on this site was built for this site, so "selection" really means deciding what to build. A game is published here when it clears four tests:

1. It works on a phone. Not "it technically loads" — the touch control scheme has to be one somebody would actually choose.
2. It explains itself. A new player should understand the goal within one run, without reading anything.
3. The difficulty is honest. No unavoidable failures, no fake randomness that punishes correct play. If a game gets harder, it has to announce it.
4. It is worth a second run. The most important test and the hardest to fake.

Games that fail those tests do not get published, which is why there are eight rather than eighty.

Content standards

All games and all written content on this site are original. No third-party games are embedded or hosted here, and no article is generated and published without being read, edited and checked by a person. The editorial policy describes the full workflow, from research through fact check and SEO review to publication, and explains when a "last updated" date is allowed to change.

The site is family-friendly by design. There is no violence in any game, nothing to buy, no user accounts and no user-generated content.

Independence and funding

This is an independent site with no affiliation to any marine organisation, aquarium, conservation body, research institute or diving association. Nothing here is sponsored, and no game or article placement has been paid for.

The site is designed to carry standard display advertising in future. No advertising network is currently loaded — the empty bordered boxes you may see are reserved layout space, not adverts. If and when advertising goes live, the privacy policy and cookie policy will be updated before it does, not after.

Get in touch

Corrections, bug reports and questions are all welcome at editor@underwaterarcade.xyz, or through the contact page. Reports of factual errors are prioritised.