Circuit City—P2

Premise/Overview

Welcome to Circuit City, the safest city in the world! You play as Casey Brooker, the young prodigy Chief of Police who helped In a not-too-distant future, you live in Circuit City, celebrating the 15th anniversary of the implementation of autonomous police robots capable of making arrests. Your tough attitude and knowledge on the WatchBots has you working diligently to keep the city safe. Other than work, you have your brother Jay. But when a conspiracy arrives, you might just find yourself questioning what you stand for.

Play the game here! Note that the game was designed for 1920 x 1080. You should zoom out, if needed, to achieve this aspect ratio.

The dystopic elements that the player eventually encounters include the idea that the “autonomous robots” make targeted arrests of individuals without any known family members or loved ones, and ship them out of town to give the city the facade of being safe. In reality, the government controls the WatchBots beyond the knowledge of the police force, to maintain control. The player realizes that which they’ve strived so hard to implement now has dangerous consequences, but are torn between saving themselves, their family, or their city.

Plot Summary

The player begins witnessing a flashback. within, they are celebrating with their brother when they get the news that their father has been murdered. Saddened by the loss, the player sees a greater desire to implement WatchBots, who could have saved their father. The game jumps 10 years, to when the main character is now Chief of Police, a role earned at a young age due to their expertise on WatchBots, and pushes to develop and deploy them.

After this exposition, the player goes through a normal day of work, including reprimanding another officer, and preparing for an anniversary speech. During this time, they learn more about the world of Circuit City. By the end of the day, they get a call from their brother, and showcase a different side of their personality: one that is caring and loving. However, the moment is brief, as they are pushed back into a tense workflow.

During the second day, after normal procedures, the player stumbles upon a weird arrest case file: one for their brother, but it’s fabricated. Suspicious, they investigate, but WatchBots are called to arrest them instead. Based on past choices, the player can escape, but find themselves in peril. In the end, they must choose to try to escape Circuit City on their own, try to help their brother before it’s too late, or go even further, and take down the government for its conspiracy. However, they find that while their choices are many, they are limited in what—or who—they can save.

Background

The game primarily follows the main character as they struggle with balancing caring for work and their family, as well as a city of innocent civilians. The game acts a reflection of blindly following/trusting the government, as well as warning the dangers of excessive robotic presence in the police force, Artificial Intelligence notwithstanding. The idea initially came from rapid prototyping, where I wanted something involving a person in a position of power having to choose between procedure or their family, presented in a way that leans towards empathy for this person, rather than corruption. Ultimately, Artificial Intelligence/robots came into the picture, and I found a dystopian world to explore. Additionally, I focused undergraduate students well-versed with Interactive Fiction or narratives in general for playtesting; in doing so, I was able to focus more on the narrative, with an assumption that players may have more initial investment/desire to read than a normal person.

Iteration History

Introductory playtests

When crafting Circuit City, I had a vision for the plot and character development before much else. I knew I wanted a game that focused on character development, so began with a paper prototype with note cards including big plot points. Immediately, playtesters were invested in the story points, which inspired me to continue with the chosen narrative. I then translated the paper cards into a flowchart to organize my thoughts.

At this point, playtesters generally enjoyed the story when told in chunks, so I moved on to add narrative elements. At one point in playtesting, a player asked for a visual understanding of Circuit City, which led to the map below. The player found it helpful to have general visualization of the descriptions, so I made note to add backgrounds during future prototypes. Additionally, text-based description of this image was added to the game.

Secondary Playtests – Narrative Structure

After proof of concept succeeded, I moved on to add narrative elements. From playtester questioning, my goal was to solidify the motivations of the player: that is, why they care about/are knowledgeable on WatchBots, and why they care about their family (while I thought the latter would be obvious, players wanted a real reason to care about their family, in this narrative.)

To solidify this, I workshopped a small segment of my story first: the player’s introductory phone call with their brother, done in Ink.

After some brief comments on the User Interface for readability (text was initially too small for some readers), I arrived at something that looks similar to the above. At this point, I questioned playtesters on their choices: what did they choose and why? At this point, most playtesters gave reasons for choices that aligned with my goals: they either thought it was in-character, they thought the choice gave them agency/interactivity in the fiction, or they based it off of deductive reasoning from clues littered about.

Though playtesting seemed successful, there was one major issue at this point: most players barely reached getting a WatchBot sent after them after 20 minutes. After talking to playtesters, most felt that the flow of the story was solid, and made for an entertaining read. When asking about places to cut, most stated a desire to trim small phrases, rather than key sections: most players felt that the sections up until that point in the game were essential for worldbuilding, background, or characterization. As a result, I was a bit trapped on how to proceed, but the general consensus was to end the game similar to CS 247G, at the end of a “level” or chapter, with the intention to continue in the future.

As such, due to player feedback, I adjusted my roadmap to cut off certain paths, and leave the ending to be one of contemplation for players instead. Players would have to consider which path to take, and be left with the potential consequences of that action. Updated-Roadmap-5Download  (Please rotate the map in the viewer).

Final Playtests – Audio and Visuals

After getting food poisoning for an entire weekend, I finally added audio and visuals to my game, making a more cohesive product. As stated earlier, the visuals match more of that of a visual novel.

My two final playtesters respoonded positively to the visuals, thinking it added enough context to make the game more entertaining. One final playtester with hearing disability was thankful that the audio was accompanied with text descriptors, to not disrupt their gameplay. For the final choices, both players stated that they felt anxiety during the action/fight sequence, and were delighted to see the consequences of past actions beyond what they thought would come from them when they made them.

Additionally, when asked, both playtesters stated that they believed the game was a warning on government control, with one leaning more towards artificial intelligence and robot implementations, while another emphasized government lies for the sake of control. Either way, I felt that both players understood a key element of the dystopia I was trying to represent.

Takeaways