A Puzzling Present

A Puzzling Present is a Christmas themed 2d platformer. Santa has become trapped inside a mysterious present, and it’s up to you to save him by collecting 30 smaller presents, spread over three worlds. In each world, Santa has a new power, which he must use in order to navigate an increasingly challenging set of levels. It’s fun, Christmas themed, and absolutely free!

But that’s not even half of the story. This game wasn’t made by a team of developers, or even by one man in his bedroom. In fact, it was only partly designed by a human at all. A Puzzling Present is the latest game from ANGELINA, a project by PhD student Michael Cook. ANGELINA is an AI, capable of creating its own simple platform games. Previously, it was best know for a series of games based on topical news stories, which would contain images and sounds chosen by the system to suit whichever mood it felt fit the story best. Games like The Conservation Of Emily, based on a news article about Peter Mandelson’s involvement with an illegal logging company. A photograph of his face, a forest in the background and then – a scream! Hardly Shakespeare, but telling a story nonetheless. Mechanically, ANGELINA was designing the game’s levels, aesthetics, and the placement of enemies and power-ups. Now, these games weren’t unenjoyable by any means, but they were certainly basic. A Puzzling Present, on the other hand, is far more complex, and often genuinely challenging.
The extra complexity in ANGELINA’s latest project is due in part to Mechanic Miner, Michael’s new system for rapid prototyping of potential game mechanics. Michael’s articles about the intricacies of this new system, and how it develops new mechanics, make for thoroughly interesting reading if you have the time. In short, ANGELINA has access to more or less all of the variables within the game engine. Given a level unsolvable by normal means, it can then alter these variables, continually iterating until the level can be solved. This has thrown up some very interesting results – for example, one of the mechanics in A Puzzling Present, created entirely by the Mechanic Miner system, is the power to invert gravity. As I was flinging Santa around obstacles, I realised that a lot of the levels in this set could easily have come from Terry Cavanagh’s classic VVVVVV. So, not only is ANGELINA now capable of challenging the player in much more interesting ways than before, but it can do so in a manner comparable to one of the best indie platformers of recent years. And that’s just one of hundreds of potential new mechanics.

Fundamentally, A Puzzling Present is a big step towards ANGELINA designing a full, unique game of her own, with much less reliance on outside templates. That said, the AI can’t yet be credited as the sole level designer, as Michael is still acting as curator for the levels and mechanics developed by the system. It’s also not quite able to judge how difficult its levels and mechanics will be for a human player to work their way through, although that is part of the reason that A Puzzling Present exists at all. There’s an optional survey at the end of each level, through which Michael will collect data on how difficult/enjoyable each level was, and if you quit the game, it’ll ask you why. This data will all go into helping ANGELINA figure out what difficulty actually means, and how to manage it. The levels are also a lot smaller than ANGELINA’s previously known news games, owing to the extra work that has gone into proving that its levels are actually completable. Michael has said that he wants to return to news-generated games at some point, including new power-ups using gameplay mechanics developed by the Mechanic Miner system.

There’s a lot of work still to do. Michael’s self-described “Holy Grail” would be to have ANGELINA take concepts from real-world news stories and intuitively connect them to mechanics within a game. So, an article about flight would feature not just an image of an aeroplane, but would actually make it fly within the game. More immediately, he wants to expand the Mechanic Miner system so that it could be applied to, say, and RPG combat engine, developing classes, races, weapons, stats and abilities of its own. He’s even started work on having ANGELINA develop its own sprites from source photographs, rather than using pre-built characters and objects. It’s hard not to be excited, really – as soon as you start thinking about the potential of such a system, the possibilities just get more and more interesting. But could it ever make a difference in the world of ‘mainstream’ game development? “I’m optimistic,” says Michael, “eventually, developers might run software like ANGELINA on their games, and get back a list of ideas that might inspire them.” This is clearly a passion project for him – it’s hard to see a future where he’s ever going to stop working on ANGELINA, making more and more advanced games.
A Puzzling Present is out right now, for the rather fine price of absolutely nothing. If you play it, not only will you be experiencing something thoroughly unique, but you’ll also be helping make Michael and ANGELINA’s next game better still.