Write your own
Lua on board, a sandboxed VM, and errors that print a line number instead of taking the console down. No toolchain to install, no cross-compiler, no cable.
V1 alpha — boards in process
A little console you can open
papyDeck plays like an arcade machine and opens like a text editor. Every game on it is a Lua script you can read, change, and rewrite — including the ones somebody else wrote.
640×480at 60 Hz over HDMI
1 024simultaneous colours
6Cortex-M33 cores
60 mmsquare board
The game is the source
There is no locked cartridge and no compiled blob. A game is a Lua script, and the console ships with the editor’s door wide open. Change a number, save, and the game runs differently on the next frame.
The virtual machine is sandboxed — no filesystem, no OS calls, no arbitrary loading — so a bad script gives you an error message instead of a dead console. That is the point: you should be able to try anything without fear of bricking the thing.
-- A sprite that follows the D-pad. That is the whole program.
local ship = sprite.load("ship.png")
local x, y = 320, 240
function update()
if btn.left then x = x - 2 end
if btn.right then x = x + 2 end
if btn.up then y = y - 2 end
if btn.down then y = y + 2 end
end
function draw()
cls(0)
spr(ship, x, y)
end
Play what others wrote
Games are plain scripts, so sharing one means sharing a file. Download somebody else's, open it, see exactly how the trick was done.
Open all the way down
Hardware under CERN-OHL-P, firmware under MIT. Schematic, board, and every line of firmware are yours to read, fork and manufacture.
Real arcade guts
Three genlocked RP2350B, six cores, 80 to 120 sprites per scanline — roughly twice a Neo Geo — over plain HDMI, with no tearing by construction.
Where the project stands
The V1 alpha board went to fabrication on 5 August 2026 and has not been received or tested yet. Nothing here is for sale, and there is no release date. What exists is the hardware design, the firmware architecture, and a Lua VM that boots.
The pages below are the honest version: measured figures, decisions with their reasons, and the parts that are still open.