Something special is happening on MATLAB Central right now. It's a games contest, and it's amazing.

Don't take my word for it. Come and see! This is just the most recent 16 entries of the 112 that have been submitted so far.

Maybe you remember the various Mini-Hack contests that we've done. The first two were about creating algorithmic images using MATLAB. The next two stepped things up: you had to make an animation.

For our most recent Mini-Hack contest we decided to let players build a game in MATLAB. But that's a big ask, right? A lot goes into building a game. How many people could we expect to participate? A handful? A few dozen?

Since we knew that writing a game is intimidating, we took a few steps to simplify things. One is that we made it a one-button contest. Your only input into any game is a button click. The other factor was AI. As part of this contest we're providing useful AI skills to drastically simplify the process of creating a game. You can read David's "Getting Started" kit and have a game up and running in minutes. And it's never been easier to submit a contest entry. When you're satisfied with your creation, just type

>> minihackContest.submit

You might go from inspiration to someone playing your creation in less than a half hour. That's some quick gratification! Not only that, you'll be learning about what you can do with AI in MATLAB. So why not give it a try?

I think my favorite game so far is Drift Boss. In the comments, author (and Cody champ) Stefan Abendroth says "This game has been handcrafted, with AI assistance only for image coding and decoding". Nice work Stefan! And I had fun making a geometry game based on one of our old Programming Contest challenges (Gerrymandering) from years ago: Split.

And just think, on the top of all this, there is prize money (more than $1000 to give away). Oh, and lots of t-shirts! The contest runs until November 29th, so you still have plenty of time to join in. Or you can just visit the gallery and play all the games! And as you play, you'll be using, and getting a tour of, some of our recent tech: MATLAB Online, MATLAB Drive, and the shared web app technology the games are built with. So come on down and play!