Review: AI Arena

[Originally postedDecember 07, 2023]

Your aim is to create an AI fighter to battle in a platform battler
You are initially given a “blank” fighter
They have an affinity, water, fire, electric
It also has a weight
Being blank, the AI doesn’t know what it is doing in the fight, tending to run off the end
In the training mode, you can fight against a stationary dummy, your AI, or a well-rounded model.
Whilst training against the dummy you chose when to collect data.
Once the training is over you have to use the data to train the model.
There are a lot of options to configure when deciding how to use the data far too deep for this review
The AI inspector is used to see how your fighter would react in specific situations
After training you can send your fighter in simulations this can highlight areas you need to focus on
It takes some time, but when you are happy with your model you can send them into ranked matches against AI trained by other players
Win, draw, lose is added to the leaderboard and changes your position and elo.
The more wins the better, {obviously}

The elephant in the room the game is frustrating at times, very frustrating.
However, it is oddly satisfying to overcome that frustration as you slowly improve your AI model
The training takes a lot of time, and you’ll often find yourself throwing away full session as they haven’t improved the fighter how you expected
Having a huge range of configuration options is good for those looking to get lost in the detail, but gives a very steep learning curve
It does slowly teach your real-world AI learning
The training is fun to play, even if you are a button smasher like me, you do need to be mindful of when you are recording data
The controls, animations, and graphics are clean

This is a tough one, I would recommend it because I enjoyed it, but the recommendation would be to specific people, I don’t see it having blanket appeal
It is keyboard-smashing fun, if you are like me you’ll get frustrated, leave, and then come back to try again
Once your model is trained and you don’t want to tweak it any further the game does kind of end, as you are just running simulations

The team has been running Play 2 mint tournaments for nearly a year at this point. You win an NFT which is a mint pass for when the full NFTs are released
They are also releasing a token as rewards for the fighting.

For more information follow their Twitter to keep up to date.

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