BudAI Labs makes games that take empathy seriously. Part studio, part applied research practice: we prototype, we measure, and we publish what we learn along the way.
Now building
Research · Unity
An open world adventure for neurodiverse children, built around a fox companion that earns your trust rather than demands it. Athena is both a game and a study of how understanding grows between different kinds of minds.
In development, pilot in preparation
Unannounced · Unreal Engine
A narrative game we are not ready to talk about yet. What we can say: it is systems driven, it is premium, and it is being built with the same question in mind. More when it is ready.
In development
The practice
Building to understand means showing the work, not just the trailer. The studio publishes its thinking and releases its tools.
Essays on user generated content, production craft, and how games actually get made.
Read on SubstackA free planning tool for game teams, released as an open Claude skill under the MIT license. Take it, use it, break it, tell us what happened.
Get it on GitHubAbout
BudAI Labs was founded by Sunitha Kumar Girish, a creative technologist with two decades across EA, PopCap, Microsoft, Ubisoft, and The LEGO Group, where she led production on the LEGO Brick Editor built in UEFN with Epic Games. She codes, she ships, and she experiments to understand.
Budai is the laughing monk with the cloth sack: he travels light, gives freely, and always finds the joke. The AI sitting in the middle of his name is not an accident. That is the studio we are trying to be.
Contact
Researchers, publishers, studios, and the simply curious: we would love to hear from you.
hello@budailabs.com