Human Questions
Toward an Appetizer-Sized,
Knowledge-Gated Exploration Game
K. T. Watters
1,2,3,4,5,6
1
Picea Abies Institute for Engine Technology, Indiana
2
Conservatorio Nocturno de Música, Buenos Aires
3
Berliner Institut für Pixelkunst e. V.
4
Kyoto Center for Garden and Level Design
5
Arbeitsgruppe Neuronale Grak, Berlin
6
Oce of Finance (vacant)
September 2026
K. T. Watters (
kev.town
) Human Questions CHECKMATE 2.0 1 / 10
Abstract
We present Human Questions, an ancient datacenter
dive with a partner in crime: an appetizer-sized,
knowledge-gated exploration game with juicy combat
and unconventional traversal mechanics.
We propose to nish and release the single-player game
on Steam by Q2 2027 with a single author (n = 1) and a
budget of $50,000.
Preliminary results from an in-person showcase
1
suggest
that gliding along walls as a stream of photons is fun
(p < 0.05). One test subject had to be dragged away
from the gamepad.
Keywords: metroidbrainia; burrowing; neural cellular
automata; ducks
Figure 1: A partner in crime (left) and the
protagonist (right).
1
Showcased at
Talk & Play #57
in Berlin.
K. T. Watters (
kev.town
) Human Questions CHECKMATE 2.0 3 / 10
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
What Stays
Dense, intricately connected world demanding
attention [1, 2]
Mood, mystery, atmosphere, a certain
lightness [3]
Music at the emotional core (composed
in-house, n = 1)
Respect for: player’s time and intelligence
Non-goals
Hand-drawn vector-style visuals [2]
Lock-and-key ability gating [4]. The key to the
“door” is you, noticing.
Busy parallax; instead favoring at, painterly
compositions: lo- 2D, glammed up for 2027
Criteria were established prior to data collection, which consisted of playing a very large number of games.
[1] Nigoro, La-Mulana (2012) [2] Team Cherry, Hollow Knight (2017) [3] Mobius Digital, Outer Wilds (2019) [4] Shared Memory, Animal Well (2024)
K. T. Watters (
kev.town
) Human Questions CHECKMATE 2.0 5 / 10
Methods
North star: the character controller. Hit-stun and
i-frames millisecond-tuned; expressive moves chain into
each other; approachable, with a high skill ceiling.
Everything ows from that!
Burrow Dive into any surface and swim through it; pop
out with momentum.
Ride Burrow lines are express tunnels. Some invert the
room’s geometry.
Move Ropes, conveyors, contraptions, bouncers.
Fight Readable combat and bosses which test your
grasp of the expressive moveset.
Notice Knowledge gates: the way forward is on screen
before you understand it.
Apparatus: a custom engine and in-game editor for that
“and now for something (mostly) dierent” vibe
Figure 2a: Burrowing.
Figure 2b: Combat, when necessary.
K. T. Watters (
kev.town
) Human Questions CHECKMATE 2.0 6 / 10
Materials
The datacenter is alive. Its surfaces are painted by hand
and grown by neural cellular automata: grids of tiny
cells, each running the same small learned rule.
Nobody animates them. Hit one, and it has to heal. The
cells are part of the gameplay: swim through them, nd
a way to use them against your foes...
Instruments: live textures, dynamic lighting, shaders
everywhere.
Trained in-house on rented GPUs, building on Cells
2
Pixels
2
(used with the authors’ permission).
Figure 3: A self-organizing material. No
two frames alike.
Figure 4: The study site, as currently surveyed.
2
Pajouheshgar et al., From Cells to Pixels, SIGGRAPH 2026.
https://cells2pixels.github.io/
K. T. Watters (
kev.town
) Human Questions CHECKMATE 2.0 7 / 10
Author Contributions
Role Contributor
Conceptualization K.T.W.
Engine, editor & tools K.T.W.
Music K.T.W.
Pixel art, tiles & backgrounds K.T.W.
Level design K.T.W.
Neural textures K.T.W., Cells
2
Pixels
Sound design K.T.W., freesound.org
Funding acquisition this slide
Since May 2026: 1,033 commits, 99 rooms, one level
editor, a public showcase.
Experience: programming since 199X; games played,
n ≫ 1.
Selected prior work
[1] Zero Days VR. With Scatter. Emmy winner.
[2] GodotVision. Godot on Apple Vision Pro.
[3] Threezy. 3D art on your phone.
[4] Content Creator Simulator; A Very Holographic
Aquarium. Looking Glass.
[5] Raymarching Toolkit for Unity.
[6] Strange Dates. Queerness and Games
Conference, 2018.
[7] Wish U Were Here. With R. Yang, E. Cameron,
F. Ramallo.
More at
https://kev.town
K. T. Watters (
kev.town
) Human Questions CHECKMATE 2.0 8 / 10
Response to Reviewers
Reviewer 2: “The player character art reads as unnished vs the backgrounds.”
Response: Agreed. A character art pass is scheduled.
Reviewer 3: “Which pits are navigable and which are death is unclear.”
Response: We are removing the pits. You can go everywhere.
Reviewer 4: “He thought the duck would hurt you.”
Response: We stand by the duck.
Limitations. Scope is one world, single-digit-hour-count sized.
K. T. Watters (
kev.town
) Human Questions CHECKMATE 2.0 9 / 10
Budget & Declarations
Table 1: Proposed budget.
Salary & living expenses (9 months) $50,000
Total $50,000
Sep 2026 Public prototype (done)
Q4 2026 First area complete; Steam page
Q1 2027 Content complete; demo
Q2 2027 Launch on Steam
Funding. This work is not currently supported by
any grant. (Yet.)
Conicts of interest. The author would very much
like to make this game.
Data availability.
https://keelo.itch.io/humanquestions
Correspondence.
kevinwatters@gmail.com
Figure 5: Robustness check: results hold inside out.
K. T. Watters (
kev.town
) Human Questions CHECKMATE 2.0 10 / 10
