Are your friends terrible at Pictionary? How about having an AI guess what you're drawing?
That's the premise behind Mattel's Pictionary Vs. AI. Announced today, the modern spin on the classic board game incorporates artificial intelligence into the gameplay via your smartphone.
The game is similar to the standard Pictionary, except the AI guesses what you draw instead of another player. Mattel taps into Google's Quick, Draw! AI, which has been trained using millions of hand-drawn images.
(Credit: Mattel)Here's how the game works. First, it's loaded onto a smartphone and placed where everyone can see it. Each player draws a card that has an object on it, and they have 30 seconds to draw the item on their card. Once the timer on the smartphone expires, players place tokens on each other's drawings to predict whether or not the AI will correctly guess what each drawing is.
From there, players point the smartphone's camera at their drawing and the AI tries to guess the picture. Players who predict the AI's response correctly get to move forward a space while players who guess incorrectly do not. (The AI also gets to move forward if it guesses correctly.) This process is repeated for each player's drawing to finish a round.
(Credit: Mattel)The game comes with four erasable drawing boards, four board holders, four wet-erase markers, eight tokens, a phone holder, and 112 clue cards. The phone holder comes with a QR code on the back that assists the players in launching the game. Players need to move 18 spaces in order to win. In a four-player game, you can do that in as few as nine rounds.
“Pictionary Vs. AI continues to build upon our impressive portfolio by offering a new, modern way that fans can engage with the brand, combined with the hilarious quickdraw gameplay they’ve always loved," said Ray Adler, VP and Global Head of Games at Mattel.
Mattel says that the board game is ESRB-certified for children ages 8 and up. It also follows COPPA, so all of the content is child-friendly. The board game is available for pre-order on Mattel's website for $24.99 starting on Sept. 27 and will be available in retail stores on Oct. 2.
