Silicon Crossroads is an interactive fiction game about a student making technology choices: using AI for assignments, phone use late at night, and cheating during an exam, and how they spend a free weekend. Each choice changes three scores: Knowledge, Wellbeing and Network. At the end (crossroad time), the player decides whether to apply for a job, buy a lottery ticket, or try streaming (Youtube Star), and their earlier choices decide which of eight endings they get.
Paper prototype for Silicon Crossroads can be found here
My playtester (Rachel) chose option B in all four chapters, applied for the job at TechNova, and reached the “Knew Your Onions” ending.
What I & the Playtester Observed
- The choices didn’t feel like real choices.
- My playtester pointed out that the three options in a chapter could often all be done at the same time, so they didn’t conflict with each other.
- The chapter of the game where the student needed to write an essay should have an additional option. My playtester suggested adding the option “write it myself first, then use AI to polish it,” a very common real-life approach the game didn’t offer.
- Chapter 2’s wording was confusing. “Your phone keeps buzzing” sounded like a notification from Canvas rather than social media, so it wasn’t clear what the scene was about.
- Option C in Chapter 2 felt abrupt. “Post your class notes online” didn’t flow from the scene, and my playtester felt it could be unrealistic for some players.
- Timing matters in Chapter 4. A free weekend in week 1 is very different from one in week 10, so the scene needs to say when it happens.
- The same letter every time. My playtester picked B in every chapter. That might mean the “best” option is too easy to spot, which is worth watching in future playtests.
What I’d like to change
- Make the options in each chapter conflict, with a limit on time, so the player can only do one task. For example: “You only have Saturday free.”
- Add a fourth option to Chapter 1 which states “write the intro to each paragraph yourself, then use AI to polish it.”
- Rewrite Chapter 2 with more scene detail, so it’s clear the phone is buzzing with social media at midnight, and make option C grow naturally out of that moment.
- Set Chapter 4 at a clear point in the semester so the stakes of each option are obvious.
- Shuffle which letter the strongest option sits under, so players have to read and think rather than spot a pattern.
