Generative art is made by writing rules that produce the image, instead of drawing it by hand. Every world on this portal is generative. Here is how it works.
Rules plus randomness. Rules give structure; randomness gives variety. Only rules looks repetitive, only randomness looks like noise. The interesting results come from mixing the two.
Seeds. A seed is a starting number that controls all the "random" choices. The same seed always gives the same world. Each visit picks a new seed, which changes where crystals stand, how tall mushrooms grow and where islands float. The ↻ button on each world picks a new seed.
Noise. The hills in our worlds use layered noise: a large smooth wave, plus smaller waves on top. Large shapes with small details on them look natural, which is why coastlines and mountains look similar at different scales.
Constraints. Limits make decisions easier. Each world is only 320 by 180 pixels, scaled up. That small size forced us to keep every world simple and readable.
Emergence. Simple rules can create complex results no one planned. Conway's Game of Life uses four rules about cells on a grid and produces moving, repeating patterns.
Try it: press ↻ on the same world a few times and see which parts change and which stay the same.