Game: Unprompted
Genre: Art, AI, Puzzle
System: Steam (Windows and macOS), also available in a browser
Developer|Publisher: Matt Eshleman
Controller Support: None
Price: UK £4.29 | EU € 4,99 | USD $4.99
Release Date: March 7th, 2023
Review code used, with many thanks to Matt Eshleman.
Unprompted is a video game centred on the generation of AI artwork. Each level is a new picture or set of pictures, and players need to guess the prompt that was used to generate them.
AI Art is a Big Deal
It was inevitable that the sudden interest in AI-generated art would spawn a video game. Unprompted is a deep dive into the absurdity and popularity of this divisive topic, but instead of covering some of the opinions and problems surrounding the controversial subject, developer Matt Eshleman just decided to have fun with it.
Unprompted is the result. Players get to look at and ponder over some of the weirdest images that only an AI robot could create, trying to put together what prompt could have been behind the pictures. It’s a kind of comedy; it pokes fun at not only the strange prompts people put into AI image generation bots but it also is laughing at the bonkers images these programs tend to produce.
While AI-generated art and images have improved quite a bit, most of the images in Unprompted are of the first generation of them. The results are deformed compilations of stock imagery and face that sort of resemble the subject but are distorted in a way that adds to the difficulty of the game.
The Gameplay of Unprompted
So what is it like to play Unprompted? It’s just weird. There’s no other word for it. The pictures look like some kind of fever dream come to life, and interpreting exactly what the AI is trying to accomplish is always a challenge. The images pop up, and you must keep typing in words until you figure out the prompt. There is a helpful hint system to help if you get really stuck, but each hint costs points.
After completing a full set of puzzles, players earn 3D versions of some of the puzzles they guessed correctly to put into their collection of strange items. By the time I was done playing this title, I had a whole museum’s worth of worthless objects that probably shouldn’t ever exist in real life.
Unprompted is one of those games that you have to play to fully appreciate. Thankfully, there is a free-to-play version of Unprompted on the web by the developer; it’s not quite as complex as the paid version, but it does kind of give an idea of what it feels like to pit yourself against some of the strangest AI prompts out there.
The Pros of Unprompted
This game is weirdly fun. While I didn’t much care for playing Unprompted on my own, I did enjoy getting other people to play it with me. The idea behind Unprompted feels unique, fresh, and something different to play with friends and family.
Some of the images are interesting, despite them all basically being awful impersonations of anything an actual artist or stock image company would produce. It’s a simple idea, but compared to everything else out there, it’s weird and wonderful in a way that makes it compelling.
The Cons of Unprompted
Oh boy, this game. Have I mentioned that Unprompted is super weird? Some of the images are put together in a way that makes me incredibly uncomfortable. And most of the craziest images are paired with these surreal paragraphs of nonsense text talking about the image’s subject. It feels a little bit like the game is making fun of itself, but the text is neither fun nor interesting to read. It’s just absolute nonsense about a bunch of nonsense images based on a nonsense prompt.
Many of the prompts in Unprompted require you to have a working knowledge of famous people’s names and to be familiar enough with their faces to recognize them. Even when they are so distorted, their own mothers probably would have a hard time recognizing them. While I knew most of the political figures, from Boris Johnson to Obama, sports figures are relatively unknown to me, so I had a lot of trouble with all the Lebron James faces.
Several of the prompts I saw only had one image, making it nearly impossible to tell what the original prompt could be. Take the image below; I would never have gotten through this one without the hint system.
Highly Specific Answers
Others were highly specific, only allowing answers that were the exact wording of what was originally written. For example, this Playmobil Walrus. I tried Lego, Toy, Plastic, Clay, and Claymation before I gave up; I don’t know enough about Playmobil to recognize it by this:
The prompts were sometimes very generous, taking different forms of the actual prompt’s words (like taking “growing” when the prompt’s word was “grow”). But other times, they were extremely specific (needing to say “street” specifically instead of something like “road,” “pavement,” “crosswalk,” or similar). This made the game a lot less fun, and overall, it was a pretty frustrating experience with some of the puzzles.
Conclusion
Unprompted is a weird game that can be a lot of fun to play with the right group of people. It’s unique, challenging, and can make for a good time. However, the way the prompts are judged by the system is inconsistent and sometimes incredibly picky. While many of the groups of images are easily guessable, there are several single-picture prompts that are just impossible to guess, even when you’ve been playing for a while.
I like the concept of this game; Unprompted really is the most unique title I’ve played in years. However, it feels unfinished. I think this game needs a lot more love and a little bit more playtesting before it could actually be called a finished product.
Final Verdict: I’m Not Sure.
