Infinite Craft: The Game That Combines Elements With a Language Model
Published on · Joaquín Dati
Drag Plant onto Smoke and you get Incense. Combine Incense with itself and you get Perfume. That is how Infinite Craft begins, a game by developer Neal Agarwal released on January 31, 2024 that quickly became very popular.
What it is
It is a sandbox game played in the browser. You start with the four classical elements (water, fire, wind and earth) and combine elements two at a time to get a new one. Everything you discover is saved in a sidebar where you can search by name.
How it works under the hood
Results are generated by a language model, Llama (versions 2 and 3.1, according to public documentation), which also assigns each element's emoji. To avoid repeating queries, the game first checks its database to see if that pair has been combined before. If not, the AI creates the element and saves it. This way, the same pair always gives the same result for every player.
Why it hooks people
- No fixed goal: since the number of possible elements is theoretically infinite, you set the objective.
- First Discovery: if you are the first person to create an element, the game labels it "First Discovery".
- Community: players built recipe databases and some attempted to speedrun it.
What it teaches developers and founders
Generative AI does not have to be the whole product: it can be one piece inside a simple rule. Here the rule is "two elements make one", and saving each result cuts queries and keeps things consistent. There are limits: a content filter blocks offensive results, and incoherent results still appear, which players find funny. Agarwal himself said Llama is not as smart as ChatGPT.
Who made it
Neal Agarwal is a New York developer who publishes small games on his site, neal.fun. After the website, the game came to iOS (April 2024) and Android (May 2024).
An invitation
Try it for ten minutes and notice when you stop looking for a goal and start playing with the combinations.
Source of inspiration: The game itself, Infinite Craft by Neal Agarwal