Lab Manager: A Research Tycoon Game

Lab Manager is a free academic tycoon game where your job is to build a research lab from almost nothing. Code data, hire undergrad research assistants, buy better equipment, train your team, manage burnout, and try to turn your questionable little spreadsheet into peer-reviewed publications.

It is part research methods game, part office simulator, part slow realisation that academia may have been an idle clicker all along.

Instead of selling lemonade, you are producing journal articles. Instead of coins, you earn research funding. Instead of random disasters, you face ethics board events, recruitment problems, data storage chaos, reviewer comments, coffee incidents, and other tiny administrative horrors wearing sensible shoes.

The Daisy Chain Presents

Lab Manager

Build a research lab out of coded data, tired assistants, grant money, coffee, and the occasional ethics problem.

Lab Status Scrappy but Functional The project exists, which is already more than some labs can say.

Publications 0

Publication Goal

Fill the manuscript bar, submit the paper, and convert fragile academic labour into research funding.

Pilot Study: Does Coffee Improve Survey Completion? 0/100 data

Code Data +1 data Submit

Funding £0

Funding/sec £0

Data/sec 0.0

Burnout 0%

Reputation 0

RAs 0/2

Office

A journal-style lab blueprint. Desks, machines, and staff appear as the research empire becomes less defensible.

PI RA Desk Computer Coffee

Upgrades

Hire staff until the lab reaches capacity, then train them into something dangerously close to competent.

Lab Log

Triumph, admin, and the odd ethics flare-up.

Save Reset

What is Lab Manager?

Lab Manager is a browser-based psychology and research methods game built around the strange little ecosystem of academic research. You start by manually coding data, then use your funding to buy upgrades that make the lab more productive.

You can hire research assistants, train them, improve your analysis speed, add coffee machines to reduce burnout, and introduce open science protocols to keep the ethics risk under control. As your lab grows, new events unlock, ranging from minor consent form problems to full research empire nonsense.

It is designed to be quick to play, easy to understand, and weirdly close to the real thing.

How to play

Click Code Data to build progress toward your next publication. When the publication bar is full, submit the manuscript to earn funding and reputation.

Spend your funding on upgrades:

Research assistants collect passive data.

Training improves your assistants.

Servers speed up analysis.

Coffee helps reduce burnout.

Grant writing improves passive funding.

Open science lowers ethics risk and steadies the lab.

As your lab status improves, you unlock more RA capacity, more events, and more academic chaos. Some event choices cost funding. Some cost data. Some cost dignity, although the game is merciful enough not to track that numerically.

Why we made it

Research methods can sound dry when it is taught as a list of definitions: variables, sampling, coding, ethics, replication, peer review, funding, consent, analysis, publication. Useful, yes, but often presented with all the warmth of a broken printer.

Lab Manager turns those ideas into a tiny playable system. It gives students a light-touch way to think about how research actually moves from data collection to publication, while also admitting that the whole process contains a suspicious amount of admin, coffee, panic, and waiting for someone to reply to an email.

It is not a serious simulation. It is, however, emotionally closer to the truth than anyone involved should be comfortable with.

FAQ

Is Lab Manager free to play?
Yes. Lab Manager is free to play in your browser.

Is this a serious research methods simulator?
Not exactly. It is a playful tycoon game inspired by research methods, academic labour, ethics boards, peer review, publication pressure, and the slightly haunted machinery of university life.

Who is Lab Manager for?
It is mainly for psychology students, social science students, PsySoc members, teachers, lecturers, and anyone who has ever looked at a spreadsheet and felt it looking back.

Does the game save progress?
Yes. Lab Manager saves locally in your browser, so you can return to your lab later on the same device.

What does the game teach?
It introduces ideas around data coding, research funding, publication, ethics, peer review, burnout, research assistants, and open science. Quietly. Through chaos.