This is a sponsored article, having played the demo for vaudeville and speaking to the AI myself I can recommend the game as it is a fun experience, although still heavily in development it promises to provide an experience entirely AI generated, from AI art and AI music through to actual artificial intelligence characters which have a based narrative but will adapt to what conversations you have together so no playthrough should be the same.
While the full game promises to offer a VR experience so you can be fully immersed, the demo lets you come face to face with some of the characters which will be in the full title and try to figure out the mystery behind vaudeville which on my play seemed to revolve around 3 murders and figuring out who or what may be behind these attacks.
The AI did seem to have natural conversations, and while it could use a little buildup to figure out what’s going on rather than just stumbling across it a while into conversations this is something the full title will undoubtedly work on, the important part is that the AI did recognise for the most part what I was asking and saying, and did come up with intelligent and fitting responses to these, and although triggers for events like the promised circus or burlesque shows which state are “going on now” there’s no way to trigger the demo is clearly just to show off the technicality and conversations you can have, while the real gameplay elements will be in the full release to experience these (though it would have been good to see the AI generated art and shows for these)
As far as the technical demo goes I found conversations with the ai to be interesting and generated some fun and entertaining responses while trying to figure out who done it, especially as the occult seems to have a large inclusion in what was going on but when someone clearly incriminates themselves the police chief wouldn’t do anything about it but again this is clearly just a demo to show off the conversational aspects which all functioned great.
I look forward to seeing how the full game develops and have great idea’s that perhaps when you obtain new locations mentioned by the AI it could perhaps generate these on the map for you to go explore and converse further, like mr’s potters home and the lake marina claimed to want to swim in rather than shower for my playthrough, and it would be interesting to see how the game works out, and for the levels on offer in the kickstarter rewards you can obtain a full copy of the game for yourself for quite a reasonable price so I would recommend getting in on the kickstarter if you’re interested as it will be cheaper than the full release and you help to fund the creation of something that looks pretty unique and interesting as a title.
I have no idea how the VR aspects will work and I’m sure the title will also have non vr modes available too, but it sounds like perhaps a free roaming experience to talk to multiple people in environments may be on offer and does sound like this could be a very unique experience and one to watch for certain.
I will be sure to update you with more on the full release should I get a copy, but in the meantime be sure to join the kickstarter for yourself and try out the demo and have conversations of your own and see how differently the story unveils for yourself.
Be sure to check out the kickstarter campaign for yourself and back any reward levels you see fit at Vaudeville: an AI-driven whodunit by Bumblebee Studios — Kickstarter
The demo is also available on steam now so you can check it out for yourselves and have conversations with the AI now at Vaudeville on Steam (steampowered.com)