Unlike the Convai-powered human NPCs we were recently discussing, AI-powered animals are far more interesting, believable, and frankly, appealingly un-creepy. So if you're interested in the best and latest in AI-driven virtual creatures, here's a chance to get a free Alpha preview of Stay: Forever Home, an upcoming mixed reality game for Quest headsets where you go on adventures with Ember, a magical, multi-color dawg imbued with its own unique life. (Watch some gameplay footage above.)
Click here to request early Alpha access to Stay: Forever Home.
Lead developed by game industry veteran Bernie Yee, the game promises much more than caring for a simple virtual pet.
Ember comes, Bernie tells me, with "a personality axis, multiple quirks and preferences, biological state."
Ember's AI code, he explains, "was taken from Sims AI and LMNO, the secret Spielberg game which didn't ship." In that defunct project backed by Steven Spielberg, a player would have escorted an alien creature called Eve across the country. So Ember's soul, so to speak, is distinctly Spielbergian.
"You add the AI into the mix with a dynamic environment and other (dumber) critters, it's pretty magic," says Bernie. "There was a build I played, a month ago, pre-DICE. i choked up because she felt so alive. So much of this is ALSO procedural animation, so it doesn't look like she's replaying animation timelines robotically."
Exploring a virtual world with Ember leads to some interesting emergent gameplay:
"The world has NPCs in it, its fauna [called] Mosslings. Some steal, some gift (sorta like, wasps and bumblebees). Ember is interested in them -- [she] will pounce on thieves especially. And is uninterested in the gifts (unless it's food and she's hungry!)"
With that in mind, if you as a player come across a gift-bearing Mossling, Ember will start chasing it; to distract her, you can throw an apple toward the chaos.
"Ember's attention shifts from Mossling to apple -- problem solved, player receives gift. It's the AI's variability in attention based on stimuli that feels both emergent and a lot like our dogs [IRL]."
While Stay: Forever Home is launching on the Quest, Bernie and his team hope to launch it on mobile and Switch later on.
Watched. Quite Cute. Somewhat disturbing in 2D :)
Still reaching for a reason though. But hey, their Palmer money to spend
Posted by: sirhc desantis | Wednesday, March 26, 2025 at 09:39 AM