Game: MORA SAYS... (Public Demo)

UPDATE: Patreon flagged this post due to violations of the Community Guidelines. I'm hoping to resolve the issue by using non-problematic vocabulary, so keep that in mind if my language sounds a bit odd in the following text.

Hey everyone, I hope you're having a great week! 🥰
After working on it for a long time, I am now finally ready to publish my new game, Mora says... !

Mora says... is an adaptation of the popular game "Simon says" and comes with two major innovations: For one, it's the first game to feature myself as a main character giving you instructions. Secondly, to make this possible, it's my first game consisting entirely of AI-generated images. You can read more about that below.

✨ PUBLIC DEMO of Mora says: https://milovana.com/webteases/showtease.php?id=72030&key=40d776f1b1

⭐ Play the full game: https://www.patreon.com/posts/patreon-game-111218054

To thank my amazing supporters for their loyalty and patience, I have decided to publish this new game exclusively for patrons. Since I don't want to cut everyone else out of the experience entirely, this post includes a fully playable public demo of Mora says..., allowing you to play the game from start to finish, including the end. However, central features are missing in this version. For example, you will not be able to un dress me as you play, one of the game's main progress dynamics.

⚠️ Important: Past patrons can play the full version too!

Creating games of this quality and complexity takes multiple months, so it pains me to see supporters coming and leaving without any new content from me. To show my gratitude for my past patrons, I'm inviting anyone who has previously supported me on Patreon at any point in 2024 to play the full version of Mora says..., even if you are no longer a patron at this moment. Simply send me proof of your past support on Discord (username: morexis) and I will personally grant you access to it. Thank you! 😘

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

I won't bore you with the details of everything that has been going on in my life these last months. Some of it was great (like visiting Japan for the first time and finishing my Bachelor's degree), other parts weren't quite as fun.

All of the game's mechanics are explained on its internal "Information" page, so I want to focus on one specific topic here. This game is the result of extensive brainstorming and experimenting, which has been on the horizon for a year and a half, certainly ever since the creation of our Discord channel #artificial-art. 🤖

using artificial intelligence to generate images for my games

I've been keeping an eye on the advent of artificial intelligence since 2021 and actually wrote my final thesis on its application in everyday life. At the latest when I first got my hands on OpenAI's Dall-E, I was convinced AI art is more than a shortlived fad. A couple months later, my mind was completely blown when I installed Stable Diffusion and learned how to use it (with the help of EFEmma, thank you!). Artificial intelligence, and particularly AI art is a bit like magic to me. I'm not an expert at writing prompts or perfectly tweaking the settings; everything I've done so far, I've figured out through trial and error as well as some useful reddit threads.

Regardless of my lacking knowledge about the workings of artificial intelligence, my mind began racing with ideas to employ it for my content in meaningful ways. In general, I'd seperate the production process of my games into two main parts: the text (including code), and the pictures. In my experience, the former is the more creative part of production, while the latter has always been a bit tedious and constraining. However, this is where AI comes into play: All of the pictures used in Mora says... have been generated by Stable Diffusion.

Almost two years ago, I already asked whether you were open to me using AI generated images in my games and most of you answered that you were indifferent about it. Since I'm aware of the general controversies surrounding AI art, let me say a few words about why I think Mora says... is not only an interesting experiment, but a promising development for the future of my games.

One of the earliest and most popular anime J O I creators, someone that has indirectly served as somewhat of a role model to me, expressed publicly a long time ago that they didn't like my games because I use "bad art", valuing quantity over quality. To some extent, I agree; each of my games uses hundreds of different images, mainly to keep them engaging and to increase their replay-value. I first write the story and J O I , then look for images to go along with it. Depending on the nature of a scene, finding fitting high-quality images can be really easy or almost impossible.
Luckily, my games are not intended to be hung on a wall to be gazed at like a piece of fine art. Instead, they use a combination of stimulations (images, text, sound) to create an engaging experience. To achieve this, I believe the amount of stimulations to be more important than their quality. Consider this for yourself, if my instructions ask you to go at it slowly for a minute, would you rather do it to one amazing picture for a whole minute or to six pretty good pictures for ten seconds each? Which would get boring more quickly? So yes, although I vow to always provide you with the highest quality content possible, in some context quantity is more important than quality. 🤔

Weren't we just talking about AI art? What's my point? I think we're all aware that art generated by AI is not as good as art created by talented humans. You will notice the usual AI-blunders in Mora says... too: my clothing, my hair, the environment are inconsistent, and having five fingers per hand is more of an artistic choice than a rule set by nature. At first, these issues really annoyed me and almost made me decide not to persue this experiment any further. But after seeing how much you enjoyed seeing my AI generated pictures on the server, I decided to keep pushing and realized something important. Despite some blemishes, the AI pictures achieve the one thing they are intended to achieve: evoking emotion and creating an engaging experience. They are not meant to be extensively studied individually, but instead are presented like imperfect, blurry frames of a video or hazy memories, jointly forming one work of media. Additionally, AI art is constantly evolving and it's currently as bad as it will ever be. Please keep that in mind when you play Mora says...

original characters

I haven't even mentioned the most important advantage of AI generated art yet: custom characters. Sure, if the main character of my game is Mercy from one of the most popular video games ever, finding pictures of her is quite easy. However, since I as Morexis am not a popular character, I've had to commission artists to create drawings of me in the past. Paying 20 to 50 dollars per image is feasable if I just need some graphic for my profile picture or Patreon banner. But if I wanted to create a whole game featuring me as a character, as many of you have wished for years, commissioning those hundreds of pictures would greatly outweigh any financial support I've received from you. Thus, creating a game with me as a prominent character is only possible thanks to artificial intelligence. 🤩

And since it's now feasible to create games with myself as an original character, what's stopping me from introducing other original characters? As I've mentioned in past posts, this "Morexis Character Universe" is a really interesting idea I'd love to explore further in the future. For now, Mora says... only features the titular character but if this experiment goes well, prepare to meet more characters of my own creation soon.

offline games

Before I wrap up this post, let me address the events that unfolded in the last two weeks. I originally planned to publish Mora says... and this demo right at the start of September with only one day in between them. However on September 2, Milovana, the website hosting all of my games encountered severe server problems, making all of my games unplayable. Milovana went back online a week later, which is why you're able to play this demo now. In the meantime, fellow J O I game creator Indyc helped me create a downloadable version of Mora says..., allowing patrons to play it offline on their computers while Milovana was unavailable. Since some of you have been asking for it for a long time, I now plan to create offline versions of all my past games. This project with the name "Morexis Unplugged" (get it, because of those plugs 🤭) will likely become another supporter benefit on Patreon. For now, patrons can already download Mora says... to see how it works, but keep in mind that it's an earlier version of the game than on Milovana.

In other news, I used Milovana's downtime to update my website a bit! It should be easier to access all of my games from there now, and I've added a new page for my new brand partnerships! Thanks to these great brands, you can now support me and our community when you buy your next toys - at no additional cost to you! Have fun shopping!

closing thoughts

There is so much more to say about artificial intelligence and art generated by it, but this post is already much longer than I had planned. I hope my remarks above don't come off as defensive; keeping you informed about the process and contemplations involved in the creation of my games is very important to me - including my doubts and uncertainties.

I sincerely hope you enjoy Mora says...! Please let me know if you run into any bugs or have any questions about the game. I look forward to your feedback and hope you are as excited for the future as I am.

As I mentioned above, my games take a long time to create and it sucks that I can't publish new content more frequently. Please know that your patronage is crucial for the creation of my games, particularly if I haven't published anything in a while. I am incredibly grateful for your support and loyalty, it means the world to me. 💖

Mora says... thank you!! 😘

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Join our Community Discord server: https://discord.gg/morexis

Play all of my games: https://www.patreon.com/collection/266734