The Basement Games Lab

The Basement is an academic community, development, and research gaming space located in the basement of the Central Library. Walking into our space you'll experience an arcade like atmosphere with a welcoming community that fosters passions for game creation, analysis, and play. All of our services are free to current UTA students, faculty, and staff.

Please note a physical UTA ID is required to use the equipment in The Basement Games Lab.

We offer a verity of games resources including workshops, consultations, and course reserves & integration. We're outfitted with the newest, most up-to-date consoles and equipment. We have a large collection of beloved modern and classic games with new games added regularly.

See our Discord for current events, D&D adventures, workshops, and other activities happening in our space!

If you have questions related to the space, please contact TheBasement@uta.edu.

Location and Hours

Central Library (map), Basement

Consultations and Workshops

No matter what stage you are at with your game design project, The Basement can help with video and tabletop game design and development. Our staff can provide instruction, feedback, and resources from the beginning stages of "where do I even start?," to helping you learn how to get certain elements in your game to function, to even playtesting on our PCs or in our space.

Please fill out our consultation request form to submit a request for a consultation for game development. This can include learning Unreal Engine, coding, art & animation, narrative & storytelling, and how all of these integrate into designing a game. Please include if you are designing a video game or tabletop game (board game, card game, TRPG), as well as as much detail about the project as you have and what you are wanting to learn. This helps us pair you with the best available staff with the most knowledge in that area if possible. We look forward to helping you on your game development journey!

Recreational Gaming

Earn Pepsi product rewards just from playing! PC's, consoles, and tabletop. Ask a staff member for details.

Console Games

Take a look at our catalog of console games. Our console games have a 4 hour check out time by checking out the game and controller from our front desks.

We are equipped with modern consoles like the PS5 and classic consoles like the Xbox 360. We also have a selection of retro games like Gamecube, Wii and Super Nintendo. We have popular games including: Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Fifa/FC, Call of Duty, Spiderman, Minecraft and more! Want to see a new game added to our space? Throw it up on our suggestion wall.

PC's

Specs:

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
Nvidia Geforce RTX 3090 24 GB GDDR6X

We offer two hour checkout times and our PC's are first come first serve. Waitlist available upon request. You must be in person to be added to the waitlist. We currently have several free-to-play games ready to play on our PC's. Additionally, you can play your own games by installing them through clients like Steam, Epic, and Riot launchers during each session. Please note that some larger games (100GB+) may take up to 30 minutes to install.

Tabletop

Check out our tabletop game catalogue. We have card games, board games and D&D/TRPG and Wargaming resources and modules.

Our Grab'N'Play shelf features games you can pick up and play easily by just scanning a QR code. Games like Uno, Chess, Codenames, Catan and more. We also have the 2014 and 2024 D&D Core Rule Books, a few modules, along with some other TRPG systems like Blades in the Dark and Call of Cthulhu TRPG. Next to these shelves are maps available for TRPG and Wargaming.

Our two glass shelves feature more games and resources. The larger shelves store our intricate or longer play-time games like Scythe, Twilight Imperium, Dominion and others. Additionally, we have a smaller glass shelf with TRPG and Wargaming miniatures and terrain available for check out. See a Basement staff member for items in either of these shelves.

Requests and Room Reservations

If you would like to host an event in The Basement, reserve a tabletop table, need a game and equipment reserved for a class, or would like to use our resources for an academic purpose please fill out this Microsoft Form

Note for Room Reservations we do not allow the entire space to be reserved at this time. You can reserve one of our two Rooms or our Tabletop tables in the main space:

B03, our all purpose room with consoles and a single tabletop table--Fridays only
B04, our PC gaming room with 8 gaming computers
Tabletop tables in the Main Space (food allowed on all tables without felt).
- 1 large white table--good for Warhammer, crafts, and other large scale activities
- 3 Tabletop tables with felt available upon request--seats six players max each.
- Hightop table--seats four players

Tour and Experiential Learning Integration

Please complete this form if you would like to speak with an Experiential Learning Librarian about integrating library creative technologies and spaces into your course or if you would like for your class to tour our Creative Spaces and Services.

Tour and Experiential Learning Integration Form