Animal AI and A-Life ideas by level 1 Games Design & Art students: non-digital modelling of social behaviour, ecosystems and resources, sensing, movement and conflict.
In response to this talk, and this brief:
With materials to hand, model an AI animal mechanic in a board game or card game. Don’t design the whole game, just an element from one – or a combination – of the following:
Animal behaviour and movement in an environment
Animal sensing of / reaction to environment or player actions
Animals as conversational agents – this can be anthropomorphic / cartoony, or more naturalistic (think about real animal communication)
Animals as resources in a game
You can be as experimental as you like, but please try to include a degree of autonomy in your animal behaviour – i.e. driven by chance (dice roll), automation or complex factors – not just by players controlling them. Remember the different modes of animal intelligence / behaviour I talked about: predation, combat, nurturing / comfort, training, as material resource, conversation.
