Roam Bounty Program #019 – $10000

Objective & Importance

Roam is a research lab building its first social product: a mobile game builder that lets anyone create multiplayer games in minutes. We run targeted bounties to solve complex technical challenges that unlock scalability and extensibility in our stack.

This bounty is focused on building an AI-driven playtesting system that can simulate player behavior, automatically detect bugs, identify balance issues, and generate engagement metrics. The budget is at least $10,000.

Problem Statement

Traditional playtesting requires significant human time and effort, slowing down iteration cycles. Our goal is to automate the process by creating AI agents that simulate player behavior. These agents should be able to:

1. Play Naturally: Navigate levels, interact with mechanics, and simulate realistic player decisions.
2. Detect Issues: Identify game-breaking bugs, anomalies, exploits, or infinite loops.
3. Assess Balance: Track retries, time spent, and difficulty spikes to identify frustration or boredom zones.
4. Provide Feedback: Generate structured reports summarizing bugs, balance issues, and fun/engagement scores.

Context and References

Importance

Automated playtesting reduces reliance on manual testers and accelerates game iteration. By simulating a swarm of agents, we can stress-test multiplayer systems, explore edge cases, and refine balance quickly.

Challenges

• Subjectivity of Fun: Engagement and “fun” are difficult to quantify without human judgment.
• False Positives: Agents may flag intentional design elements as bugs.
• Complex Mechanics: Some systems require nuanced understanding of player intent.

Possible Approaches