Indie Dev Turns Your Infected Hard Drive into a Videogame
The Lunduke Experimental Artificial Intelligence Terminal is a game of cat-and-mouse set among your personal files.
One of the interesting things about games are how, as a form of entertainment, they subject us to things we'd rarely experience willingly. We drop ourselves into zombie apocalypses and alien invasions from the comfort of our homes, immensely enjoying things that would be rather inconvenient in real-life. This quirk goes well past fantastic environments, and even applies to everyday, mundane experiences. A new indie game called The Lunduke Experimental Artificial Intelligence Terminal makes this clear by challenging you to prevent a virus from infecting a hard drive. To raise the stakes, L.E.A.I.T. is set on your hard drive, and you're taking part in the struggle to protect personal documents from invading software.
L.E.A.I.T. is a text-based game that follows standard Windows command prompts, like CD, LS, and DIR. The game introduces you to friendly AI named Ruby before subjecting your hard drive to a virus that drives her insane. Thankfully, the virus follows a very specific pattern; it moves from directory to directory, infecting one file at a time, but it cannot move to an empty directory. That means you can quaratine the virus, and save Ruby, if you can track and delete files fast enough to trap it before its too late.
Of course, L.E.A.I.T. doesn't actually put your hard drive at risk, as it uses a representation of your hard drive's file system. Still, borrowing personal files to construct gameplay levels is a rather unique idea, forcing you to delete family photos, work files, or a potentially massive pornography collection to win the game. Creator Bryan Lunduke adds that despite the game's simplicity, players can find several extras buried within, presumably generated by Ruby's descent into madness. A demo of L.E.A.I.T. is available for free from its creator's website, while a full version can be purchased for $3.
Source: Joystiq
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One of the interesting things about games are how, as a form of entertainment, they subject us to things we'd rarely experience willingly. We drop ourselves into zombie apocalypses and alien invasions from the comfort of our homes, immensely enjoying things that would be rather inconvenient in real-life. This quirk goes well past fantastic environments, and even applies to everyday, mundane experiences. A new indie game called The Lunduke Experimental Artificial Intelligence Terminal makes this clear by challenging you to prevent a virus from infecting a hard drive. To raise the stakes, L.E.A.I.T. is set on your hard drive, and you're taking part in the struggle to protect personal documents from invading software.
L.E.A.I.T. is a text-based game that follows standard Windows command prompts, like CD, LS, and DIR. The game introduces you to friendly AI named Ruby before subjecting your hard drive to a virus that drives her insane. Thankfully, the virus follows a very specific pattern; it moves from directory to directory, infecting one file at a time, but it cannot move to an empty directory. That means you can quaratine the virus, and save Ruby, if you can track and delete files fast enough to trap it before its too late.
Of course, L.E.A.I.T. doesn't actually put your hard drive at risk, as it uses a representation of your hard drive's file system. Still, borrowing personal files to construct gameplay levels is a rather unique idea, forcing you to delete family photos, work files, or a potentially massive pornography collection to win the game. Creator Bryan Lunduke adds that despite the game's simplicity, players can find several extras buried within, presumably generated by Ruby's descent into madness. A demo of L.E.A.I.T. is available for free from its creator's website, while a full version can be purchased for $3.
Source: Joystiq
Permalink
