The Buddy System

Buddy reacting to a drawing made by the player. He loves it!
Buddy taking his turn in a game of 5-Dice.
Playing a co-op video game with buddy.

Never Play Alone

The Buddy System is a mixed reality AI companion to enrich games, entertainment, and play. There are many great ways to play, from digital games, to board, card and other tabletop games, to make believe, crafts, and general childlike expression and creativity. The Buddy System merges the joy, presence, and tactile richness of physical play with the endless possibilities of the digital world.

Inspiration

My name is Richard, and I am the designer of The Buddy System. The project was inspired by the times when I was a kid that I wanted to play a video game or game of Yahtzee but didn’t have someone whom with to play. I have vivid memories of rolling the 5-dice of Yahtzee to see how long it took to get 5-of-a-kind, wishing my older brother would play a proper game with me.

What it does

A buddy to play games with. Three prototypes in the demo

design a logo for Buddy's hat, by drawing in the real world
play a co-op 2d game on a monitor with Buddy next to you, talk to him, have him fight or mine, and check out the cool 3d explosion effects that come out of the screen.
play a 5-dice game, where you play with physical dice while Buddy brought his own virtual dice.

How we built it

We built the prototype in Unity, along with a companion 2D game built in Unity and a server to manage comms and api routing. As we explored the possibilities, every direction spun out into tantalizing directions. We decided to focus on several kinds of play. We believe that the various forms of play collectively can foster deeper believability in Buddy through shared activities.

Challenges we ran into

Our scope was very ambitious. We encountered issues related to poor internet connection causing issues with Wit.ai for TTS. We addressed these issues by building in fail safes around Buddy dialogue.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We love the three demonstrations included. We feel there are moments of magic, and that is what we are after.

What we learned

There is so much to explore at the intersection of physical play and mixed reality / AI.

What's next for The Buddy System

The tangible next steps are to expand the drawing/fashion mechanics, explore a few different game play patterns of co-op, and integrate a few well-known board and card games. Plus a few other ideas we'll keep to ourselves until 2026 :)