Project description

The Relic project is a prototype driven research project aimed at exploring how designers can integrate generative content in their games without adding too much developmental complexity or technical overhead. The project consists of two game prototypes: a text-based dungeon crawler and a 2D game built in Unity.

A core focus on the Relic project is to identify issues faced by smaller independent (“indie”) games studios in applying generated content in games. Indie games have a long history of creatively applying procedural content generation, and we believe that generative AI can act as a major accelerator for the capabilities of indie studios. However, adding generative AI to games projects requires that one accepts a certain trade-off between control and content generation, which may lead to certain design challenges. Furthermore, many current generative AI systems are rife with ethical issues of artistic integrity and copyright issues.

The Relic project focuses on providing design guidance to indie studio on how to apply generative content in games. Although generative AI is currently revolutionizing much of how we create and consume content, there is still comparatively little knowledge available on just how we should apply generated content.

In order to alleviate some of these issues, the Relic project takes a broad approach to generative content and uses both traditional procedural content generation techniques, as well as applying new and cutting-edge generative artificial intelligence techniques. This allows us to be flexible in how we apply different forms of generative techniques, and also allows us to combine generative and hand-crafted content. This approach also allows us to mimic how these technologies would be applicable in a small indie games studio, providing us with ecologically relevant findings around how generative techniques can be applied.

The first public version of Relic 2D is slated for release in late spring 2024.