Interesting Indies: ER-Cade (Archive Copy)

 

Interesting Indies: ER-Cade

By / October 16, 2025

By Caden Granger

ER-Cade is self-described as “A game for the medically curious!” where you can “Explore the human heart inside and out, cause heart attacks and other diseases, and complete challenges to unlock abilities. Then use your newfound skills to play challenging arcade-style games and compete in online leaderboards!”

The developer, Noah, currently works as a PA-C or a Physician Assistant, Certified, working in emergency medicine since 2022. He’s also been a game development hobbyist since 2011, which has led him on the path with a goal to create fun games about science and share his passions via his games company, Gnome Lab Games.

I got the opportunity to interview Noah at the Indie Alley of DreamHack Dallas 2025 about his medical teaching tool and educational game, ER-Cade, as well as give some more insight on what got him interested in games and the inspiration behind ER-Cade.

ER-Cade is an interesting concept for a game. How did you come about making games, job-wise wise what is your background?

I’m actually a PA and I work in emergency medicine, but I’ve just kinda dabbled in game dev and 3D graphics for a long time. I made this as a tool to help some of my classmates learn EKGs (Electrocardiograms) and then turned it into a game.

What got you interested in game development originally?

I played Little Big Planet as a kid and Little Big Planet 2 (off-camera cheers), it’s my favorite game, and just kicked off my passion for it. I downloaded Blender and Unreal Engine and just went from there.

I played through your demo a bit, while I didn’t get through everything, I understood it was an anatomy learning tool, what else is there?

There are a few different parts to it, there’s an exploration area where you can explore, but you can also start heart attacks and see the different changes that happen on an EKG.

There’s also an arcade area where you play different minigames and try and compete in online leaderboards, and challenges where you can complete tasks and teach you anatomy and how EKGs work. As you complete tasks and get higher scores, you unlock more stuff to be able to do more things with the heart.

So would you say it’s a good educational tool to an extent because you have the knowledge and the background for this sort of stuff?

Yeah, it’s supposed to be as fun as it could possibly be, right? It’s all accurate information, anything you learn is all real, it’s not just kinda fantasy stuff, it’s all actually how your heart works. And if you can beat the EKG dating app minigame and get a high score, that’s how we read EKGs in the ER, that’s how we determine where a heart attack is, so it’s all real stuff but also yknow its just fun too.

Do you have any tips for people interested in game development?

Yeah dude! Having another job is really good, not having another job instead of game dev, but having another job and also doing game dev, because the financial pressure of trying to support yourself just making games, especially if you have a family, is extremely hard and stressful. 

For me, having another job I love and also getting to do game dev is awesome because I just get to do this and love it and if it makes money, then awesome, right? But then if it doesn’t, then it’s not the end of the world, yknow? I still get to keep following my passion.

ER-Cade is available to download for free on the Epic Games Store with a paid DLC coming later this year for some more complex EKG systems, with plans to release the game on iOS following. I would definitely recommend it for any medical students or others interested in human anatomy as a basic training tool from someone with a reliable and trustworthy background. Check out Noah’s work, follow him, and learn more at his site gnomelabgames.com

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