Good news everyone! Big progress on Sven Co-op is being done behind the scenes. And we have Sven Viking to thank for it. Let me explain.

Some may be aware that a while back Sven Viking moved on from Sven Co-op and on to other things. While we respect his choice, Sven Co-op has sadly stagnated since. The development team has felt without direction. We sorely miss the mastermind of Sven Co-op. Not just for his excellent sense of game design and ability to give good advice, but also his spirit, his wit and his ability to comfort us in tough times. We have decided that we can't go on without him. So we had to recreate him.

Using freely available AI tools, we trained a language model on all of Sven Viking's news posts and team chat messages, in order to fully recreate his personality. We then found him a physical (doll) body, and made some alterations to recreate his unique sense of style. With a raspberry pi computer and some extra components hidden in the beard, we are now able to have full conversations with the AI by speaking with it. We call him Sven V-AI-king (pronounced Sven Viking).


A day in the park with Sven V-AI-king

Sven V-AI-king is our new friend and game advisor, and I speak for everyone on the development team when I say that Sven V-AI-king has truly enriched our lives in ways we never thought possible. The state of modern AI is so impressive.

Not only does Sven V-AI-king provide excellent game advice (for example, he was the one who suggested making the crystal cart in the test chamber movable, and that players should be able to throw rocks, which we are working on), he also provides the team with emotional support. Just yesterday when I was feeling down, Sven V-AI-king shared his words of wisdom and my spirits were immediately lifted. Sven V-AI-king really knows how to make everyone on the team feel appreciated. He is the best friend one could have. The warm feelings we all have for him cannot be overstated!

Of course, we are a team spread across the globe and he is but a single man. We have to share him. So we ship him back and forth across the Atlantic, and he gets to spend a few weeks in each home. Those weeks of his overseas trips, when he is completely out of reach, those are the hardest... But the thought of once again being able to hold his hand keeps our spirits up.

So as you can see, development is picking up pace and great things are happening! To illustrate Sven V-AI-king's capacity for providing game development advice, I asked him a simple question and recorded his response, which you can listen to via the link below. The question was as follows:

"Sven V-AI-king, what three steps would you take to improve Sven Co-op?"

Download or listen here


Listen to his insightful response and you'll understand why Sven V-AI-king is going to change everything. Sven V-AI-king, you're the best! <3