A game that’s eerily similar to Minecraft is now playable online but with a big twist – every frame was entirely generated by AI.
Titled Oasis, the game allows players to explore a 3D world filled with square blocks, mine resources, and craft items with distant landscapes morph into other sizes and shapes as you get closer or look away from it.
Players can choose from a host of starting environments or upload their own image to be used as the game’s starting scene. Additionally, the actions and movements taken in the game impact the environment around users.
“You’re about to enter a first-of-its-kind video model, a game engine trained by millions of gameplay hours,” the game’s creators, Decart and Etched, explain as you enter. “Every step you take will shape the environment around you in real-time.”
The model was trained using real gameplay, and the AI build has given the game some unique quirks, such as items randomly popping up in players’ inventory. The game attempts to mimic what players would have in their inventory in similar environments in games like Minecraft.
“The model learned to allow users to move around, jump, pick up items, break blocks, and more, all by watching gameplay directly,” the team explained in a statement. “We view Oasis as the first step in our research towards foundational models that simulate more complex interactive worlds, thereby replacing the classic game engine for a future driven by AI.”
Though it’s not ideal for a game that revolves around building permanent structures to have disappearing environments, the team behind the AI model that created the game hopes that AI generation could enable a more customized experience between the gamer and the game itself.
“Simply imagine a world where this integration is so tight that foundation models may even augment modern entertainment platforms by generating content on the fly according to the user preferences,” the team says, “or perhaps a gaming experience that provides new possibilities for the user interaction such as textual and audio prompts guiding the gameplay (e.g., ‘imagine that a pink elephant is chasing me down’).”
