'Happy Game' Is Not for the Faint-Hearted

The game focuses on a young boy experiencing a severe nightmare. (Amanita Design)
The game focuses on a young boy experiencing a severe nightmare. (Amanita Design)
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'Happy Game' Is Not for the Faint-Hearted

The game focuses on a young boy experiencing a severe nightmare. (Amanita Design)
The game focuses on a young boy experiencing a severe nightmare. (Amanita Design)

A proverb once said: Never judge a book by its cover. Well, it also applies for video games…You should never judge it by its name because anyone who expects “Happy Game” to be light-hearted fun will be in for a nasty surprise, reported the German news agency.

The game from developer Amanita Design – best known for family-friendly adventures like Machinarium or Samorost – is indeed not a happy game at all, but rather a horror adventure.

The game focuses on a young boy experiencing a severe nightmare. Things he has lost like a ball or a teddy bear suddenly reappear in his nightmare, but to bring them back with him to reality, the boy has to go through absurd adventures and solve disturbing puzzles.

When it comes to the depiction of violence, Happy Game doesn't hold back: blood, dismembered corpses, and even guillotines are all here and the many smiling faces and colorful bunnies do little to change that.

And if the player makes a mistake, they may be sending the young protagonist to the afterlife. The game isn’t suitable for children, but those who like horror and over-the-top violence will likely enjoy themselves. "Happy Game" is available for Windows, and Macs.



Huawei's AI Lab Denies that One of its Pangu Models Copied Alibaba's Qwen

FILE PHOTO: Huawei logo is seen during Munich Auto Show, IAA Mobility 2021 in Munich, Germany, September 8, 2021. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Huawei logo is seen during Munich Auto Show, IAA Mobility 2021 in Munich, Germany, September 8, 2021. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo
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Huawei's AI Lab Denies that One of its Pangu Models Copied Alibaba's Qwen

FILE PHOTO: Huawei logo is seen during Munich Auto Show, IAA Mobility 2021 in Munich, Germany, September 8, 2021. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Huawei logo is seen during Munich Auto Show, IAA Mobility 2021 in Munich, Germany, September 8, 2021. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo

Huawei's artificial intelligence research division has rejected claims that a version of its Pangu Pro large language model has copied elements from an Alibaba model, saying that it was independently developed and trained.

The division, called Noah Ark Lab, issued the statement on Saturday, a day after an entity called HonestAGI posted an English-language paper on code-sharing platform Github, saying Huawei's Pangu Pro Moe (Mixture of Experts) model showed "extraordinary correlation" with Alibaba's Qwen 2.5 14B.

This suggests that Huawei's model was derived through "upcycling" and was not trained from scratch, the paper said, prompting widespread discussion in AI circles online and in Chinese tech-focused media.

According to Reuters, the paper added that its findings indicated potential copyright violation, the fabrication of information in technical reports and false claims about Huawei's investment in training the model.

Noah Ark Lab said in its statement that the model was "not based on incremental training of other manufacturers' models" and that it had "made key innovations in architecture design and technical features." It is the first large-scale model built entirely on Huawei's Ascend chips, it added.

It also said that its development team had strictly adhered to open-source license requirements for any third-party code used, without elaborating which open-source models it took reference from.

Alibaba did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Reuters was unable to contact HonestAGI or learn who is behind the entity.

The release of Chinese startup DeepSeek's open-source model R1 in January this year shocked Silicon Valley with its low cost and sparked intense competition between China's tech giants to offer competitive products.

Qwen 2.5-14B was released in May 2024 and is one of Alibaba's small-sized Qwen 2.5 model family which can be deployed on PC and smartphones.

While Huawei entered the large language model arena early with its original Pangu release in 2021, it has since been perceived as lagging behind rivals. It open-sourced its Pangu Pro Moe models on Chinese developer platform GitCode in late June, seeking to boost the adoption of its AI tech by providing free access to developers.

While Qwen is more consumer-facing and has chatbot services like ChatGPT, Huawei's Pangu models tend to be more used in government as well as the finance and manufacturing sectors.