House House explains its AI use during Big Walk development

House House says it used large language models late in Big Walk’s development to help with technical challenges and bugs. In its explanation, the studio estimates that the use was connected to well under 0.1% of the game’s code and says generative AI was not used in any other context when making the game.

In some cases, the studio says, snippets from model responses became starting points for code the team modified. Its main use was to research problems with third-party code through chatbots.

The shadow problem

House House describes a Unity issue that rendered shadows behind the player even at great distances. The studio says this made the game run 50% slower for around 20 seconds at sunrise and sunset. After researching the problem and speaking with a Unity engineer, the team asked a chatbot and received a possible fix. House House says it extensively modified the suggestion before it worked, and that the fix involved about ten lines of code.

The studio says it had no internal AI policy during development, calls that a failure and plans to work on a more comprehensive policy for the future.