Little Learning Machines is an adorable, educational and yet frustrating venture into neural networks and how machine learning works. Developed and published by Transitional Forms, the game has been lovingly crafted alongside a host of additional materials to help you understand what is happening and how it can apply in the real world. There is no part of me that thinks Little Learning Machines is anything other than a labour of love.
We witness a giant, blue, talking crystal wake up on a sandy island that they have made their home and almost immediately encounter a strange, lifeless robot which washes up on the shore. By accidentally placing a piece of discarded crystal on top of the broken robot, we discover that they can actually absorb the gem and use it as a sort of brain. The game explains it much better than I can, but essentially the crystal brain reveals that each robot has slightly different abilities when it comes to learning and implementing what it has learnt.
This encourages our giant gem friend to teach us about The Cloud, a space where we can learn and teach things through our dreams. This is where the first issues with Little Learning Machines arises, and is also, coincidentally, where you will probably spend most of your time when playing the game.
Within The Cloud you can teach the robots to complete tasks by rewarding them with LOVE or dissuading them with FEAR. You are given five slots, to provide either LOVE or FEAR as a reward for completing an action, and can opt for it to be delivered in increments of 1, 10 or 100. This isn’t ideal, and there were points where I found myself longing for more slots or more customisation of the increments. It is worth noting that the bots remember what they learn, so you can teach them things bit by bit but it takes so long that it is tedious to do so.
When I first jumped into the Little Learning Machines early access release I found it hard to enjoy the game due to the Amino’s not completing tasks after learning them. This made it a lot harder to engage the game, and it was incredibly demoralising spending time trying to teach the robots only to see that they have learned nothing after all. Unfortunately, despite the fact that I was able to get considerably further in the game once it was fully released, this issue doesn’t seem to have completely gone away.
Now, it is fair to say that Little Learning Machines demands a lot of patience. Even when your Amino seems to be perfectly completing its task in The Cloud, it can seemingly take a lot longer for it to fully internalise what it has learned. One one occasion I had The Cloud running a training exercise for one Amino learning to chop logs and collect crystals at the same time for almost 45 minutes. For this reason, I have come to the conclusion that Little Learning Machines is not as much of a puzzle game as it is an idle game or virtual pet. You can even dress up the Aminos with accessories you find as you complete puzzles.
Now, I stand by what I said in my early access review, the graphics and general atmosphere of the game is right up my alley. It is colourful, engaging and definitely works to gamify AI and neural networks. The aesthetics were what drew me towards Little Learning Machines to begin with and honestly, I think they fit brilliantly with the theme of the game. AI can often seem scary and inaccessible, especially recently with an increase in concern around what is real and what is AI-generated. Little Learning Machines and it’s friendly demeanour and bright colours bridges the gap and makes it feel much more approachable.
One of the highlights of the game is easily the different islands you can venture to, and the challenges and new items, tasks and Aminos. From an island shaped like a dog bone which is filled with, you guessed it, dogs to a volcanic island on the brink of collapse. Upon arriving on each island, you are first tasked with inspecting each new item, which will allow you to place them both on your home island and in The Cloud. This will allow you to teach your Amino specific tasks: picking up an axe to chop down birch trees, a watering can to water dying flowers or a snowball to throw at a mysterious, moving snowman.
It seems as though there are some improvements on the early access game. It was slightly less tedious to get the robots to do as I asked, though still not easy by any means, and things seemed to make a little more sense overall. Whether this is because it is my second time visiting Little Learning Machines or because it has actually been made clearer is hard to know.
Unfortunately, as much as I want to love Little Learning Machines, it is just not for me. The frustration that comes from having an Amino learn perfectly in The Cloud only to continuously walk into a fence or start spinning around on the spot for no apparent reason made me put the game down after 17 hours of playing. Maybe I don’t have enough patience or maybe I’m shockingly bad at training neural networks, but I have poured enough time into training these cute but dumb robots to know that Little Learning Machines is not my cup of tea.
Megan played Little Learning Machines on PC with a code provided by the developer.
