SYSTEM 1
LAYA
Decision model · non-autoregressive
- Reflex~10 ms
- Focus1 pass
- Size322–421M
- Builds3 × 3
Special move One forward pass: scores every legal move at once.
PixelCortex: games with a mind of their own
Games with a mind of their own.
We build arcade games where every opponent is a model and every move is a decision. No scripts. No cheats. Just reflexes.
↖ Grab the stick · press the buttons · insert a coin
Scroll to playStage 01 The old trick
For forty years, game AI has been a magic trick.
Scripts. Waypoints. Rubber-banding.
A thousand if-statements in a trench coat.
We deleted all of it.
In a PixelCortex game, every move an AI makes is a real decision, made by a model
in milliseconds, from exactly what it sees.
Stage 02 Meet Laya
A mind that plays on instinct.
Psychologists describe two speeds of thought. System 2 is slow and deliberate: it reasons step by step. System 1 is fast and intuitive: it just knows. Chat models live in System 2, writing their answers one token at a time.
Laya is a System-1 decision model. It reads the whole situation at once and scores every possible move in a single forward pass. There's no monologue and no chain of thought, just a reflex about ten milliseconds long. That's exactly what a game needs.
Laya is a non-autoregressive decision model built on ModernBERT and mmBERT encoders. Our cabinets run it right in your browser on WebGPU, about 20 ms a decision, with no server in the loop. Laya on Hugging Face ↗
- per decision
- 0ms
- forward pass per move
- 0
- lines of scripted AI
- 000
- of AI moves chosen by the model
- 0%
SYSTEM 1
Live feed · What Laya sees
Simulation
Click the board to drop food
State
Question type: choice
Which way should the snake move?
Laya's call
A stand-in scorer plays here, so you can see the loop. In our games these numbers come straight from Laya.
Stage 03 The arcade
Choose your game.
Our first cabinets. Laya runs right in your browser, with no install and no server, and one download is shared by every game. Use ← → and Enter.
Laya on this device
Every game shares these. Download one once and it is ready in every cabinet, even offline.
Stage 04 How a move happens
Four steps. About 10 ms.
Every tick, the game and Laya run the same little loop. The game waits for the answer, so a move is never stale.
The game describes the board in plain words: the food is 3 left, the tail is safe, the rival's head is close. Laya gets the same picture you do.
food_is: "3 left, 2 up"
It asks one typed question. The options are exactly the legal moves, nothing more and nothing less. No reversing into your own neck.
type: "choice" · options: 3
Laya scores every option in one forward pass, in about 10 ms. It's deterministic: same board, same answer, every time.
p = [0.91, 0.06, 0.03]
The top option gets played. There's no pathfinding, no safety net and no secret cheat mode. If Laya picks the wall, Laya hits the wall.
move("left")
Repeat. Every tick, every seat.
Snake runs in lockstep with Laya. Invaders pilots decide 15 times a second, and the fleet commander decides every time a bomb can drop.
Stage 05 Boss fight
System 2 vs. System 1
System 2 · Autoregressive
Thinks out loud, one token at a time.
Situation
A bomb is falling on your cannon. Impact in 0.4 s. Which way?
System 1 · Laya
Scores every move in one pass.
Decided in 10 ms
Dramatization, slowed down so you can watch it. Big models are brilliant at thinking slowly. Real-time games need a brain that thinks fast, so Laya gets the controller.
Stage 06 Hall of fame
Measured, not vibes.
Every number here comes from seeded runs in our Laya Lab. Same seed, same model, same game, every time. We never average runs across prompt revisions.
- 1st92%ENGEarth vs. the Invaders: shot accuracy, English Q8_0 in Narrated vision
- 2nd110/110TYPInvaders destroyed over two reels with zero cannons lost, Typed-Decisions Q8_0
- 3rd10 MSLAYWarm decision latency on Apple M5 Max, every quant
- 4th755ENGNeon Serpent: average ticks survived solo after body awareness (was 131)
- 5th37.1ENGNeon Serpent: average solo snake length (was 15.5)
- 6th0%ALLUnsafe moves picked by any model with Narrated vision in Invaders
- 7th000DEVLines of scripted game AI, in any game, ever
▮ Invaders: arcade fleet, seeds 1–3, 2 reels. Snake: English Q8_0, 24×16, seeds 1–10.
Stage 07 The studio
We make games that play back.
PixelCortex is Digifinity's game design studio. We build arcade games where the AI isn't a feature on the box. It's a player holding the controller. Every opponent, wingman and fleet commander is driven by a model making real decisions, live.
House rules
Final stage Continue?
CONTINUE?
The cabinets go live soon. Leave your initials and we'll save you a spot on the high-score list for launch day.