A free PC game every few days

[J T]

I'm so two thousand and late.

[J T]

Secret Habitat
SIZE: 45MB


*click for download, which you can donate for, or take for free*

If art is made by a computer, can it still be art?

Computers don't feel emotions. They can't fathom aesthetics. They aren't qualified to comment on the human condition, much less comprehend it. But if they can create abstract artwork that one could mistake for being made by a human, does the computer pass an artist's version of the Turing test? These are questions you will be left wondering when you walk around in Secret Habitat.

It's a small file, but this virtual art gallery simulator uses procedural generation techniques to create an endless amount of artworks and music loops. Everything is procedural: the music, the artworks, the names of the artworks, the art galleries that the artworks reside in, as well as the world and terrain that those art galleries exist in. So, is the artwork the art? Is the landscape the art? Is the entire thing the art? Or is it even art since there is no real intent from the human designer to have anything appear exactly as it appears when you run the game? In fact, each time you restart it, random numbers ping about in mathematical algorithms to create a unique experience each time. Maybe the art is all in your mind and your interpretation? The painting above looks like a DJ at a rave, which makes the title all the more fitting. But maybe that's just me.



Art world, the gauntlet has been thrown.

[Ack]

JT, that looks amazing, though is it really a game or more a piece of software to observe what random patterns come together to form?

[J T]

It is more the latter, but you walk around like in an FPS. Video game probably isn't the right word, since there are no rules or objectives, but it is art that clearly owes its existence to video games.

[Hobie-wan]

So a walking simulator with arty decorations then.

[J T]

If we wanted to select the worst possible labels that still accurately describe it, yes.

[Hobie-wan]

If we wanted to select the worst possible labels that still accurately describe it, yes.

Ok ok. First Person Gawker?

[J T]

How about we just call them "walk n' gawks"? That's a phrase that will make me die a little inside each time I hear it.

[marurun]

Video past-time? Like baseball, the great American past-time (and apparently not a sport)?

[Hobie-wan]

I'm just playing JT. It's a freebie, not hating on it. I used to spend way too much time playing with fractal programs and listening to music with Cthugha running.