As of 2015, the group consisted of 5 members, including Ben Esposito, Russell Honor, Tom Astle, Jacob Knipfing, and Yuliy Vigdorchik.

The name "Arcane Kids" was derived from a mysterious re-writable compact disc with the phrase inscribed on top of it, which was found lying in a patch of dirt.

The team first met in college at Ground Zero, an on-campus DIY music club at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where they decided to start developing video games for fun, forming a homemade arcade at the club where they, alongside other student developers, could showcase game projects.

Arcane Kids was first founded at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute by Ben Esposito, Russell Honor, and Yuliy Vigdorchcik, who met at Ground Zero, an on-campus DIY music venue.

[5][6] According to the team in an online chat interview for Sex Magazine, the title "Arcane Kids" was an ominous phrase written on a rewritable compact disc that they had found lying on the ground.

[9] An in-game cell phone is constantly present on-screen, having stemmed from the concept of a character who could "skate around in a big desert, [sic] while trying to play a cellphone game.

"[2] This cell phone is used to receive missions, as well as containing Twitter integration which can be used to tweet screenshots taken in-game, and a minigame titled Mirage Cat which was originally developed separately with the intent of being its own arcade game.

[2] The phone mechanic also takes inspiration from online Flash-based titles and role-playing games such as Pokémon, with several upgrades that can be purchased using earned currency.

[10] Zineth was released in August 2012 for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh PCs, with 7 people credited as having worked on the game (including fellow students who were part of the same class at the time).

[15][16] According to an anonymous developer under the moniker "lil_vertex", the setting is that of an apocalyptic universe where the stunt hadn't "triggered an explosion of corporate skateboarding.

In the midst of this, the player's overarching goal is to venture through the various islands within the game's dystopian environment and find what is rumored to be the very last bullet to exist on Earth so it can be used to kill the Time Wizard once and for all.

It is a facetious homage to Bubsy 3D, a 3D platform game in the series released for the PlayStation in 1996 which gained infamy for its negative reception, and attempts to inform the player about the modern art frontier using gameplay which mimics that of its inspirative predecessor;[4] Bubsy's controls are made to be similar to the original game's, and stages contain copious collectibles which exert little to no effect on the player's performance.