While Angelina was locked inside Cook’s cyberprison, Puck is free for all to download and run. Grab Puck from Itch.io (on Windows and Linux, with Mac to come), run the software, and it’ll happily sit there churning algorithms and playing with rules to design and test new games. Over time, it’ll learn and develop its ideas about good games. It’s still very much a research project, but it might make you something interesting. The Puckpeeps say the software is “very basic” in its launch state. “It can design one- and two-player games, with simple mechanics inspired by games like Bejewelled, Go, Drop7 and more,” they explain. “Even with this simple setup, it has already surprised us a lot with its games! We hope you find some nice surprises too.” To learn more about Puck and Angelina and what’s going on with Cook and his research, do read the accompanying blog post. Oh, and I should mention Mads Johansen has worked on Puck too. For more on Cook and Angelina, Lewis Denby talked with him way back in 2012, and Matt Cox played a few of Angelina’s games in 2018. Disclosure: We showed Angelina in our Rezzed room in 2018.
