Pixel Perfect & Cozy: Crafting a New Era of Cozy Gaming with Generative AI
I would argue that my first experience with cozy gaming was maybe the Tamagotchi. Since I was not allowed anything that was fluffy and moved in the house — I somehow managed to convince my dad to get a Tamagotchi instead. Well… a Dinkie Dino to be exact. It was cozy, absolutely adorable, and something you could bring with you everywhere. I have fond memories of feeding the dinosaur a giant hamburger and watching it turn from a blob into a more dino shape day by day. And for a moment, when I was playing with Dinkie Dino I forgot about everything else that was going on and could just focus on taking care of that little dino.
Fast forward from 1997 to around 2008 and I got my hands on Harvest Moon DS Cute and absolutely fell in love with it. I could finally play as a girl character, take care of animals, a farm, etc. There was something absolutely charming about the game and I loved how it also was on a device that didn’t need to be plugged into the wall and you could take anywhere. Exactly like bringing your favorite book with you on a trip. It was comforting to have to something cozy and familiar to sink into when I was away from home.
But after a while (with a very big exception of Rune Factory 4 in my humble opinion) the genre started feeling stagnant, stale and repetitive. But with the release of Stardew Valley in 2016, which revolutionized the genre of farming and cozy games, a new standard was set for player expectations. Stardew Valley allowed players to get creative and add mods to the game: from changing the portraits, to adding new items, expanding the farm, altering the overall town aesthetics, and more. This significantly enhanced the replayability value of Stardew Valley. I personally have multiple playthroughs across multiple platforms: Switch, PC, and mobile.
Then came the pandemic. By early 2020, everyone was quarantined at home, unable to see friends and loved ones or even go outside. Many people were feeling isolated and lonely, unable to connect with others. During this time, Animal Crossing: New Horizons burst onto the scene and gave many people a way to connect with others again. You had your own island to get creative, decorate, and then invite your friends over to hang out. People hosted parties, events, even weddings in-game. This helped bring comfort in a time when a lot of people needed it. It also opened the genre to a lot of new players and further bolstered the cozy game genre popularity.
It’s been almost 4 years since Animal Crossing: New Horizons came about. There have been many more new additions to the genre and Concerned Ape (creator of Stardew Valley) is even working on a very anticipated new game called Haunted Chocolatier. However, despite the addition of some great new games (I myself, am very fond of My Time at Sandrock), the genre is starting to feel stagnant again. I have repeated so many of the same festivals, the same conversations, and the same friendship and heart events over and over again. There are definitely a few aspects of the gaming experience that could be significantly enhanced by generative AI.
Now I do want to preface all of this by saying I don’t believe AI should replace artists, musicians, writers, or game developers. Rather it can be a tool that helps enhance their capabilities, talents, and ideas (A good example is using AI to generate images as references for artists to follow when creating assets.).
Here are three areas I think generative AI could help in:
1. Interactions with NPCs
One of the things that made games like Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, and Animal Crossing so charming was the NPC characters. Whether it’s their character design, back story, or personality — these characters made the gaming experience more fun and immersive. However, one issue is that, after a while, conversing with these NPCs can become very repetitive. The same lines get repeated over and over and over again. This makes these characters seem less alive and potentially lessening the experience over time. Generative AI could make this experience better and more immersive. A player’s interaction with an NPC could be endless and unique. The AI could generate relevant responses based on the prompt and guardrails that the game developer puts in, especially being able to remember previous conversations and building on the player’s previous responses. This could make receiving mail from your favorite villager in Animal Crossing a fun experience — for example, if they had a snooty type personality they could dish out the latest up to date tea about the other villagers in town and build upon the gossip they sent you in the previous letter. With each letter being unique, a new dimension would be added to the gameplay.
2. Game Replayability
While one can easily argue that games, especially Stardew Valley, have a lot of replayability value (I completely agree with this!), the incorporation of generative AI could further elevate a game’s replay value by adding new layers of dynamic content. I believe that currently it is really difficult for game developers to maintain multiple storylines, splits, consequences and ramifications, and multiple endings based on the player’s responses. This challenge relates to the massive amount of assets it would take to make this happen (new environments, new characters, etc.). With generative AI there is a possibility it could take much less effort to generate some of these environments, characters, items, etc. based on the style of already existing assets created by the developers. This could help give players a new experience every time they start a new playthrough.
3. Customization
Customization has always been an area I felt a lot of these games needed more of — especially character customization. While there are a few cozy games that have some really good character customization options (shoutout to Sun Haven’s fun character customization options), a majority of the games don’t. If developers could leverage AI to help generate different colors, patterns, styles, etc. based on simple prompts from the player it could really give players the chance to create a character that really resonates with them. This also could be used for curating new events and experiences that aren’t predetermined. For example: If your character happened to save the town by slaying an evil troll as a reward the townsfolk decide to declare that in-game day a holiday. Then from then on, every year the town puts on a festival to honor that holiday, and as your character gains more reputation points the festival grows more and more extravagant each in game year.
The same could also be applied to crafting — maybe if you throw a banana into the sword recipe, it could change the shape of the sword, the color to bright yellow, change the hilt so it has a banana pattern on it, or even a banana charm that hangs from the hilt of the sword. The possibilities are both endless and entertaining!
While I am not an expert in the game development field, I do believe we are still some way off from AI being able to reliably generate usable assets, especially in 3D. However, AI’s application in text generation is much more feasible to achieve at this moment. There are already some games that have implemented this, one instance is a cozy game called Campfire that uses AI to generate conversations with the NPCs. This is still in the early stages with a lot of kinks to work out, but it seems like a very promising feature for developers to add to their games.
So it is with these thoughts that I have created a GPT called Mini Pet Adventures using ChatGPT. This combines my love for Tamagotchis, pixel art, cozy games, and RPGs into a mini game. And while I know AI generated the images and the story — some encounters during my playthrough were a bit charming and heartwarming.
I started with a prompt that specified the art style, starting stats, and type of gameplay. After establishing these basic features, I added some specific instructions. For example: asking the AI to remember how your pet looks like and what items they are wearing and build upon this image after each interaction (battle, event, etc.). And then it was time to test it!
For my playthrough I picked hatching a blue egg and here were the results:
Once it was done generating the stats it asked me what I would like to do next:
I chose to explore the forest and the GPT generated this image:
This lead me to my first battle with a goblin. The GPT then asked me if I wanted to:
I chose to attack the goblin and the battle began! The GPT was able to generate a battle with somewhat realistic attack and defense:
I ended up defeating said mischievous goblin and received a reward of a silver amulet. I told the GPT to equip it and it generated this adorable image:
I continued my journey and found a treasure chest where I got a spell and learned to use it (Fireball). I then encountered a Forest Troll and defeated it with the new Fireball skill with 8 HP left to spare. With such low HP, I then chose to give my pet a snack and decided to head into a village to see a doctor who turned out to be a “wise old owl”. They healed my dragon and sent us on our way with a little health potion for the road. At this point I was already impressed by what the AI had generated and was surprised at how much fun I was having. However, the next interaction is by far my favorite.
My dragon heads out of town and onto some rocky cliffs where it hears a roar. Based on the options I chose to cautiously check out what was happening and end up finding a Griffin. Then the GPT gave me these choices for interacting with the Griffin:
I chose to try and communicate with the Griffin and interestingly this was the response the GPT generated:
I chose to ask the Griffin if it needed help and then proceeded to follow it into the cave. At this point I thought I was going to be attacked by the Griffin but instead my pet dragon and I found a nest of baby Griffins that were hungry. Turns out the Griffin was asking for help in feeding them. So we chose to help and this was the response:
This was such a cute but also fun and unique interaction that was a bit unexpected! But the image the GPT generated after my dragon put on the pendent was simply adorable:
I really like the details that the GPT took into consideration when responding: from the look of the feathered pendent, to how blinged out my dragon was (from previous encounters), and then the best part: the happy little Griffins gathered around my dragon. It really gave me a unique experience to the adventure. I am curious to see how each playthrough will be different. If I pick the blue egg again, will it hatch into a blue dragon again? Will I encounter the Griffin again? And if I do, will it be receptive to me choosing to try and speak with it? The possibility of branches from the story are so intriguing and I can’t wait to try out different storylines.
One of the things that impressed me the most is the ability of the GPT to remember and build upon the images it generated:
As seen here, the generated pictures more or less kept the same features while adding on new accessories my dragon was acquiring. All the pictures featured my blue dragon with wings, horns, and a white belly while it progressively got more and more shiny items to wear.
My final thoughts:
I had lots of fun with creating and playing with Mini Pet Adventure GPT. I think with just this simple example alone shows the possibilities of what generative AI can do for the cozy gaming space (and for game development in general). While I do not believe AI can be a replacement for musicians, artists, writers, and developers — I do believe they can use AI as a tool to help them with their work and give players unique and interesting experiences based on how they play the game. I am excited to see how AI can evolve our gaming experiences!
If you are interested in trying out Mini Pet Adventure you can try it out here (must have ChatGPT Plus to play):
https://chat.openai.com/g/g-zKkkF5QWg-mini-pet-adventure
