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The rise and fall of the living dead!
Zombies seem to be everywhere these days and if playful fighting against the undead is your hobby, there is an app for that. Created by Queen Mary University of London student David Kilanowski, Trapdoor Zombies' adds creative twists to the classic zombie chase plus some floor dropping gameplay for good measure. There is a twist in the way the game was created - a creative game-playing Artificial Intelligence (AI) helped.
The artificial intelligence program creates endless waves of (not too intelligent) zombies moving through level maps of increasing difficulty. The cunning layout of each is machine-designed and tested to ensure it is playable. Peppered throughout the levels are trapdoors. If your thump your phone, the motion sensor opens the trapdoors and drops anything unlucky enough to be on top to their doom below, be it zombies or you. This fast paced, fun strategy game sees you race against the clock to shoot the spawning hordes, drop the zombies through the trapdoors and release in-game characters to build your zombie busting team. To make sure the AI was producing usable designs David experimented with the many variables that control the gameplay and difficulty, testing each till he found the right mix. Once they were in the code the machine was ready to create.
If you fancy taking on the undead or just seeing how AIs can design games, download the app.