If you’ve played The Life and Suffering of Prince Jerian or at least searched for it, you can see the players are fighting over one question: does The Life and Suffering of Prince Jerian use undisclosed AI art? The debate has exploded across social media platforms like Steam and Reddit.
I have investigated to see what the fuss is all about, and unsurprisingly enough, I’ve reached some interesting results. Let’s see if folks at Schisma Games really did use AI.
What You’ll Read Here
Important update (August 1, 2026):
Since this article was published, one of the Steam sources has disappeared into thin air. The link is right near the beginning of the article. When you click it now, you’re redirected to the game’s main discussions page.
In other words, the original thread and everything posted there are no longer accessible. The other Steam source has been locked as well. I mean, that’s certainly a bold move. If anything, it raises even more eyebrows.
Players and I had already collected a considerable amount of evidence and instead of addressing the criticism openly, one of the main threads where people were discussing whether the developers had used AI was erased. Take that however you will.
Does this prove the allegations by itself? No, but it certainly doesn’t make the situation look any better.
Are These Prince Jerian Screenshots AI Art Giveaways or Normal Mistakes?
Edit: Here’s another pretty obvious sign that AI may have been used here:
So here, the text describes a pretty specific scene: you walk into a dark, abandoned room where Gaius sits silently in front of a dead fireplace. He’s completely unaware of your presence.
In the illustration though, none of that is there. Instead, you just get this little flickering candle that’s basically drowning in its own wax. The smoke curls up from it and reaches toward the sky. It’s sitting there over some dark water with a tiny town way off in the distance. What do you make of that, really?
The doubt started with a handful of screenshots. Let’s see:
- A wine glass with two liquid lines instead of one, which means it’s half full and it’s also full to the brim. Can’t happen in the real world.
- Apparently, people used to store their stuff in the fireplace for sure.
- The window arches all have completely different designs from one another. There are six small window frames in different sizes that are supposed to cast shadows, but they’re only casting five shadows. They all also look exactly the same.
- You can see the gentleman’s left hand ends in a knot instead of fingers.
- This looks like a skeleton that looks like it’s got weirdly morphed with dog features. The supposed dog is super fluffy and doing this awkward little squat. The back right leg should be shifted more forward. All in all, it looks like an alien dog who was born out of a dog-sheep romance.
Edit: Yep, my mistake. It’s the Borzoi breed. One commenter was kind enough to mention that, but I still stand with what I said. The back right leg should be shifted more forward. The squat still looks awkward.
- The guy in the background looks like he has his right leg swapped with some sort of statue.
- The fingers look a bit weird, especially the ring finger, which is too long. The shadow on the middle finger is also off.
- This one is crazy. A chessboard with pawns on the wrong row and pieces stacked on one tile. This is classic AI for sure.
- The front hand is meant to be clasped, with some fingers wrapping around from behind. The ring finger of the hand is hidden in shadow. The hand in the far background is only lightly sketched with a few simple lines. It looks weird to me, though. Not sure about this one.
These all look like classic AI mistakes. The fact that you’ve got a painting of a hand that looks possessed proves this isn’t something a person draws by hand. These are all dead giveaways.
Not everyone seems to believe this supposed AI slop idea. According to the Steam community post, one player who bought early access through the Kickstarter said the art style still matches the original game and that nothing he saw was without a doubt AI.
Another one, who says she has been a working artist for decades and that she has tested AI tools herself, agreed and said this simply isn’t that at all. Others argued that hands are just hard to draw (which is something I definitely don’t buy).
One excuse that was too unrealistic to believe was that indie art always has small errors. I do believe that everyone can make a mistake and they should, because that’s part of what makes us grow. But mistakes like these that go unchecked and make their way into the final game are something you can’t ignore.
One thing people are talking about the most is the chessboard. Some pointed out that the game’s own text describes the game exactly like real chess, right down to which side moves first.
So the messy board is kind of hard to explain as a different game in this world. Others also disagreed, saying the world isn’t Earth, so the board doesn’t have to follow chess rules at all, which is again ironic. Dude, this is literally chess but pieces on the same tile? Come on.
Schisma Games’ Art Lead and AI: The Strongest Evidence
The strongest single piece of evidence came from this part of the thread. Let me quote the person who said it:
Here’s an article, written by this game’s ART LEAD – Alexey Kulakov – talking about how does AI changes the role of Art designer – it’s written by him for an AI firm JetStyle, making AI slop for Russian companies.
https://leonardo.osnova.io/2e25e0b7-7ba1-5d58-822d-ae2ada3797db/-/scale_crop/1300x/-/format/webp
Beyond that – here’s his personal site – the last article he’s “written” – well, they all look like it was all made by AI anyway, which by the way he himself admits – is about how to properly use AI tools. One of the articles mentions that they work closely with JetStyle. In almost any article are references about how regurarly he uses ChatGPT and/or how enthusiastic he’s about using various AI tools.
Do tell, though – what will it take for you to be convinced? What kind of proof do you need?
What Do Redditors Say?
Over on Reddit, the same split shows up. A user who sadly preordered because of their love for the first game said the art in the bonus artbook made him angry. I mean, if you look closely, it certainly looks like AI: a strange beard and an odd hand. It just feels off.
However, another reader answered that most “AI slop” call-outs online are really just normal art mistakes and people are quick to label anything with a slightly off feel as AI-made.
I second this, because the moment I myself see something online that may slightly look off or strange, I quickly jump to the conclusion that it’s AI, which in many cases might not be true at all.
Conclusion: Does The Life and Suffering of Prince Jerian Use AI?
So, at the end of the day, where does that leave things? Well, I have to say, based on what I’ve seen and read, no single screenshot proves undisclosed AI art beyond doubt. But there’s also a real, unverified claim that AI was used somewhere along the way and the developers haven’t clearly addressed it, which could be a definite sign that what we’re thinking is true.
To be fair, the honest answer sits in the middle: I believe they clearly used AI to get some of the works done. If so, at least they could’ve polished it, though. If you’re still unsure, it’s worth watching for an official statement before you make up your mind.
I believe from now on that AI is becoming more and more apparent these days, devs should adopt Christopher Nolan’s No CGI approach: no AI unless absolutely necessary.
Ironically, this whole article feels like it was written by AI. Here are some of the most suspicious accusations.
The “alien dog” is probably the strangest accusation to me because it’s a very well-known hunting breed called a borzoi. They look and sit exactly like this. This immediately sounds like AI, which is known for hallucinating and giving confident answers based on unverified sources, or no sources at all. A real author would have no problem simply checking whether the breed exists in real life, even if they had never seen one before.
The “knot of fingers” is just a knot of cloth from the sash. The hand is not shown here at all, it’s simply covered by clothing. This is a very easy thing to spot – any actual human can see that clearly with their own eyes, but it can be harder for AI, which tends to look for more standard poses and hand placements.
The first two window arches are drawn correctly and are almost identical, but the third one is simplified. This is a very common technique used for distant objects. otherwise, the image would look cluttered and messy, especially in that art style or in comics. The same goes for the “statue leg” or the hands in the crowd. All of these things are very obvious to adult humans, but can be problematic for AI to comprehend because it can be too literal and can’t interpret images from a human perspective.
Yeah, for the dog part I should’ve checked more carefully. Your criticism is fair there.
On the hand, though, I still disagree. As a fellow gamer and content writer, I’ve seen enough to know AI especially struggles with hands and legs. When you compare it with other obvious examples, like the chessboard, it’s hard not to get pessimistic and think they handled it the same way.
I appreciate you taking the time to comment, but I think it’s a bit ironic to say it’s obvious to every human, considering a lot of people on Steam and Reddit pointed out the exact same things because they weren’t sure if the actual human drew them. On top of that, what do you make of the lead artist situation? He’s openly admitted to using AI in his projects and even finds it interesting. Everything I wrote is sourced. At the end of the day I still think the devs used AI along the way. They just could’ve double-checked a bit more carefully in my opinion.
https://gifyu.com/image/bl4LC
Here’s a much more obvious example of AI that I recorded from the game, don’t see how anyone could deny it, you can put it in the article if you want.
Thanks for the extra evidence on this debate. Really appreciate it. I’ve added it to the article.
Thanks for covering this game! One more thing to add to your investigation: the developers abused a loophole in Steam Discussions, too.
They first merged every thread containing evidence of AI use into a single discussion with the exact opposite premise — one that dismissed or mocked the idea that AI had been used. Then, once everything had been merged, they simply deleted the thread.
If you check the link included in your article (Steam – https://steamcommunity.com/app/2936290/discussions/0/571544346711558175/), you’ll see that it now leads nowhere. This is because the discussion was quietly removed without any notice. Instead of addressing the criticism on Steam or engaging with unhappy players who suspected the use of AI-generated artwork, the developers chose to silently erase the entire discussion. Every thread, every comment and every piece of evidence disappeared at once, making it look as if the controversy had never existed.
In my opinion, this is one of the most dishonest ways to deal with community criticism, and it’s disappointing that Steam allows its Discussion system to be abused in this way.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I checked the Steam link, and yup, it no longer opens the original post. Why am I not surprised? It now redirects to the game’s main discussions page. I’ve added this to the article. I sure don’t approve of what they did, either. The fact that they felt the need to erase the whole discussion kinda says it all.