Icarus review

The following review was submitted to BreakSpace

I guess I know the editor's policy to AI assisted and developed games now

Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic. Do I like it? Not really. Is it useful? Sometimes. I’ve used it to explain errors with Node when I couldn’t find the documentation, or I’ve exhausted alternative sources.

As the world seems to be moving towards this AI technology, and as a software developer myself (albeit modern days PHP stuff), I understand Ed’s concerns as stated in his editorial for issue six: we need an AI policy. On that note, here’s a review for a game made with the help of Claude. I didn’t know who he was either, but it turned out that it wasn’t a ‘he’, but a Large Language Model or something.

Icarus starts out looking like a bat and ball game, when in fact it is more like a catch-em up. Think Kaboom! on the Atari 2600, but with a hint of Greek mythology as a theme. Collect stars, gold and power ups by moving your “bat” left and right; hearts provide extra lives, and beware of attracting the wrath of Zeus.

On each level, various items fall from a starry night sky as above, some items will elongate your bat, whilst others shorten it. The controls are responsive, and the graphics are slightly naive. It has a certain early 1980s feel to it, especially the repetitive looped game music during play.

How much of this is Claude and how much is human is unknown, but it’s an interesting if a little repetitive distraction for your work break, and as such I’m arguing here for the inclusion of AI assisted games with the caveat that there are no Aces awarded to them. If our leader Mpk agrees, you’ll be reading this review in BreakSpace issue 7; if not, it’ll appear on my blog. Neither of which I mind, but even with my suspicions about AI, I’m okay with it assisting fledgling developers as long as the output isn’t dreadful and the resulting software works on original hardware.

Icarus is available from free from here.

All issues of BreakSpace are available for free download from here.