This is a bit of a weird one. HOUND will allow players to manipulate artificial neural networks to design living organisms, create new worlds and see new evolution pathways that we couldn’t even dream up. It’s a peek into alien worlds created partly by nature and partly by intelligent design, with you acting as the all-powerful deity influencing biological advancement.
This might have to join our list of PC’s best sex games one day.
The strange wireframe models of HOUND began as scientific research looking at artificial intelligence, aimed at decoding evolutionary process and creating universal neural systems. So creating virtual life basically, beginning with bacteria and evolving from there. It’s being turned into a game to gather sufficient data.
Its 18-year-old developer, Nikita Shesterin, describes it as “a sandbox gamewhere users will encounter AI and gain abilities to manipulate evolution, change matter and space-time on their own will”.
One of the examples the developer gives in the press release is a world populated by bouncing balls that absorb sunlight and reproduce by nipping for a scenic shag in the mountains, like salmon. Oh, and you can also have a world filled with salmon, if you want.
It sounds super interesting, even if some of the information in the press release made my eyebrow raise so high it became my fringe, especially the bit where the developer claimed not only does the AI learn from your actions, watching you and following your commands, but it will also become as smart as you. There’s no way the AI can get a USB stick in the right way around every time like I can. No chance.
Then there’s this bit: “Open world, ready to be shaped and conquered – gravity, atomic bonds, nuclear decay – those are just words…” Yes. Yes they are.
But, like I said – very interesting.
A crowdfunding campaign is being launched in the coming weeks and the first version of the “system” will be launched mid September, all going to plan. It will cost around $5.50.