Annie and the AI

Annie and the AI is a narrative-focused puzzle game following the life of Annie, a young woman that has suffered from family trauma and Isolation. She builds an AI to connect with and befriend. As Annie teaches the AI, whose name is Esme, how to be more human, Esme in turn learns more about Annies life and helps her to overcome her trauma. The narrative dives into deep and relatable human emotions and circumstances while also exploring consciousness from the perspective of an Artificial Intelligence.

The primary gameplay mechanic was inspired by minesweeper and the pipes mini game in bio shock. By fusing a variation of these two ideas together and adding an image recognition element, the gameplay works as a kind of CAPTCHA interface that allows the AI to learn to see as humans do. A secondary mechanic exists for decoding files about annie's family which was inspired by word jumbles like wordle.

The puzzles use images sourced from Annie's life, family portraits that allow the player to learn more about Annie and her family. Narratively, you experience a rudimentary and stilted AI slowly picking up human traits and mannerisms until Esme ultimately feels just as human as Annie. The player is touched by Annie's story and becomes deeply invested in her struggle while simultaneously experiencing a very different version of Artificial Intelligence. They may even come to love Esme along with Annie.