Independent studio · Lodi, California · est. 2014

Just cause we can.

That's been the answer since 2014. Ninja Pandas is the creative studio of Clare and Jateen Bhakta — games, apps, and experiments, built because we wanted them to exist.

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What we make

Small team. Full stack of curiosity.

Story-driven, systems-curious games. Built slowly, on purpose, and released when they're worth your time.

Mobile and desktop tools that scratch our own itches first — then get polished until they scratch yours too.

Two decades of building, teaching, and shipping — unpacked in the open on Ninja Panda U.

The Lab

In development

We don't announce things before they deserve it. Here's what we can say:

Ninja Panda U

Learn while we build

Game development, software engineering, and product design — demystified one build at a time. Devlogs, deep dives, and the occasional hard-won lesson from years of making things with (and for) curious people.

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Our story

Our work grew a nonprofit.

Years of Ninja Pandas workshops, camps, and game jams in Lodi became the prototype for something bigger: in time, that energy grew into Open Innovation Centers, a nonprofit dedicated to nurturing local innovators and creators through invention education. Today they're two separate organizations with one shared belief — that people learn best by making things. OIC carries the community mission forward; Ninja Pandas keeps building, just cause we can.

Visit Open Innovation Centers

The Pandas

Who's behind this

STEAM educator and curriculum designer — including invention education work with the Lemelson-MIT program — with a gift for making hard things learnable.

Innovator, educator, and maker of things — from game jams and classroom tech to the games and apps taking shape in the lab.

Contact

Say hello

Collaborations, questions, or just to talk shop — we read everything.