AI Made Me Do It - Sloanysoft

As we travel along the Crap Game Highway (TM), certain reoccurring themes have emerged. Etch-A-Sketch, Lawnmower simulators and AI all have multiple entries devoted to them. This next game falls into the latter category. In fact, Mr Sloanysoft tells me he used Chat GPT to help him design the game. 

To what extent this is true, its hard for me to say, but from the image below we can assume our future AL Overlord had a hand in selecting the game's name and level themes.

So, what do we have? A game made in MPAGD, possibly with 10 single screen levels of competent platform game action.

You play a little robot chap who has to collect these lego head things to clear the level. The platforming is solid, the level design provides stiff challenge from the outset, and the graphics are attractive. 

Potential LOSER alert!

But wait! The thing with AGD is that while you can quickly make impressive looking games with impressive screenshots, a good game is not guaranteed. Games can easily be generic, boring or badly made. So is AI Made Me Do It a GOOD game or not? Well, its something of a mixed bag...

The Good

Firstly, I want to tell you I like this game. Its hard. Balls hard. But that also means you are straight into the action. You also get loads of lives too, so this helps give you a chance to progress. It is fast paced, which is perfect for short bursts of action, and the challenge seems fair (to a point). This all added up to an addictive little game I wanted to play - it has that 'just one more try' factor.

The Bad

What really gets up my nose (see what I did there?) about level 1, is the collision detection. After the falling snot sprite has disappeared, it is still there, as an invisible 16X16 grid of pixels of pure death to collide with, even when only a few pixels are displayed on the screen. This leads to loads of annoying deaths.

Also, the game starts in a place where the player is in immediate peril. So it is easy to die unfairly due to invisible snot, respawn and immediately die unfairly again - dropping two of your eight lives in seconds.

And the Ugly 

The game isn't ugly at all really. The graphics are nicely done. Although the themes the AI picked are pretty gross - noses, snot, toilets. But then, these themes are hardly new to the spectrum. 

However, in the ugly department, I will say it is not always clear what you can stand on and what you can't. For example, in level 1 you can't stand on those white blocks, which look very much like platforms.

On level 2 the skull blocks are deadly, but you have to walk on them to progress. This is due to the way deadly blocks work in AGD. You have to be standing on ONLY deadly blocks for them to kill you. A game designer could use this feature of ADG in a way that is intuitive to the player simply by making the deadly blocks less tall than the safe blocks - this is what I did in YOYO's revenge, for example. But, level 2 does the opposite, so the safe blocks have less height than the deadly blocks, meaning you appear to stand on some deadly blocks without dying, where as standing on other deadly blocks kill you. 

Final thoughts

Despite my grumbles, AI Made Me Do It by Sloanysoft is really rather fun. I enjoyed playing it. Sadly, I haven't got past level 3, so I can't comment on the rest of the game. I tried to cheat and load it into MPAGD so I could take a look at the other levels, but it crashes, sadly.

I will keep playing. AI Made Me Do It is GOOD. Maybe TOO good!!!

This game will appeal to those who like steep challenge and unforgiving, and sometimes unfair game play. There is only so many times you can get killed by invisible snot before the desire to rage quit sets in!

Chat GPT? Chat MPAGD more like.

AI Made Sloanysoft do it, and I'm glad it did. Try it here.

PS..

I made it to level 4. Nice sprites, and yet another difficult level. No invisible snot though, yay.

Level 4

PPS...

Nope.