I took part in June 2012’s Niobium Zone and was lucky enough to be picked out of a great group of scientists! My research is all about getting computers to invent and design video games without any humans getting involved.

I said I wanted to spend the money on developing mobile applications that would let more people interact with and play with the results of my research – we’ve just released the first in what I hope will be a series of free mobile apps, all thanks to I’m a Scientist and the students that took part, asked questions and voted!

After June, I worked on some brand new features for my research project, ANGELINA, and realised they’d be perfect as a tiny mobile game. So we used our IAS grant to help purchase a development machine to work on – a very shiny Android tablet – found an artist who wanted to help us design some of our artwork, and signed up as official Android mobile developers. It was very tiring – much harder than I thought it would be – but just two weeks before Christmas we managed to release our very first official app, A Puzzling Present. You can download it for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android devices here: www.gamesbyangelina.org/downloads/app.html.

Santa's puzzled by the present

Now that I’ve got my first app under my belt, I’m hoping to work on a second one in 2013. The students who talked to me about my research might remember that I said ANGELINA uses a special kind of computer ‘evolution’ to make bits of the games. I’ve got plans for a special app that will let you take control of an evolutionary program, watch it work, change bits and fiddle with it, and learn more about the awesome idea that makes ANGELINA work.

A Puzzling Present was mentioned on the New Scientist website, and others and so far we’ve had over 10,000 people download and play the game! There’s information about how we made the game on there, links to ANGELINA’s website, and even a mention for I’m a Scientist!

The best part is that as people play the game they can rate the levels and tell us if they like them or not. We’re going to use all the data to make ANGELINA even better in the future – so far we’ve had thousands of responses. If you took part in asking me questions last June, and want to let me ask YOU a question, download the game and take the surveys!

Thanks to everyone who asked questions, and who helped me out during that fortnight. I am still telling people I work with about the questions I got asked, and I probably always will – they really were very interesting and I hope you all had as much fun as I did! I’ll be sure to let you know when the next app is out, but I hope you enjoy A Puzzling Present in the meantime! Thanks for making it possible.