Choice of Robots

You're inspired by the way Mom seems to love and forgive you no matter what; she's a pretty good case in herself for the good things about humanity. "Thanks, Mom."

Kevin Gold is a genius

One of the best "Choice Of" games... HANDS DOWN!

süper

I don't typically play CYOA games, but once upon a time, I stumbled on the web version of this game. This game is surprisingly deep for what is essentially comparable to a choose-your-own-adventure book. It has a lot to say about the future of mechanics and artificial intelligence and how humanity chooses to interact with it. The writing is pretty smart in that regard, and the writing also respects the player's choices very well as things you choose to say or do in early chapters will come back with heightened significance in later chapters. The only criticisms I have for this game is that, for all it's replay value, it's rather short. A single playthrough should not take a fast reader any more than 2 hours. You are encouraged to replay constantly, both for achievements and just to see every premutation of every branching path, but it still will get old fast with constant replays. But you can do worse for 7 dollars as of writing.

Это прекрасно. Я ожидал того, что игра мне понравится, т. к. я большой фанат научной фантастики и люблю сюжеты, связанные с роботами, их взаимодействием с людьми и интеграцией в общество... Но она оказалась ещё лучше, чем я ожидал. Ощущения как после чтения очень хорошей книги или просмотра фильма того же качества. Особенно рад, что моё первое прохождение сложилось достаточно хорошо и со счастливым концом. Даже не знаю, смогу ли позволить себе ещё одно прохождение после того, насколько хорошо сложилось первое. В качестве звукового сопровождения, хорошо подходят плейлисты в жанре "ambient" на Spotify: "New Ambient" для первых глав и "Sci-Fi Scapes" для последующих.

good game i guess

I'm giving this one a thumbs up even though I don't think I could play it again for personal reasons, but it's just objectively a really well done game, and I quite enjoyed playing most of it and finished it in about a day. Enough other people have already detailed its strengths (branching, interesting choices, simple but effective stats) that I'm not going to spend too much time there and instead talk about the one thing that prevents me from wanting to replay it: theme. This probably won't bother most players but I found it a little disturbing how the robots were treated in the game. I guess I'm just very pro-human and it's long been a pet peeve of mine when stories make it sound like machines can ever come close to the value and complexity of a human life. While I can get over that for stories in other mediums, it felt a little extra disturbing for a story written in the second person, where *I'm* the one encouraged to, for example, go on dates with a hunk of metal that I myself designed, maybe even get married to it. Earlier on in the game, I thought the choices would have enough nuance that I could avoid some of this content. This is true to a degree: at the start of the game, I was given the ability to take a firm stance in saying that my robot was not human, that it could never match human intelligence, and that it was in fact an "it" and not a "he" or a "she". These kinds of choices are sprinkled throughout but I still felt a bit railroaded into accidentally creating a sentient being with emotions and free will and even the desire to procreate, which just felt off to me, especially with how I was attempting to roleplay a pro-human kind of MC. I found my ending to be honestly disturbing as a result and it kept me from wanting to replay the game, because I don't want to feel guilted about how I treat my robot. Again, this is more of a personal pet peeve, though I do think that the game missed out on an opportunity to ask some bigger questions about the nature of humanity and whether or not a robot can really be considered some kind of valuable life and, if so, what that says about humans (e.g., maybe if robots are valuable despite being nothing but machines, does that mean maybe no human is truly valuable because we're all machines?). The game sort of tries to ask these kinds of questions, but I guess I just wanted a bit more. This game was written years before the current deluge of AI content but there are so many obvious paralells and these themes are increasingly relevant to think about, Probably a decent book club book if those exist for IFs though.

The author of this novel, Kevin Gold, is a professor at Boston University who teaches about computing and AI, and it shows in the writing. Every decision you make is impactful, consequential, and nuanced. This game will have you questioning your own beliefs. It will make you feel. Choice of Robots is simply top notch sci-fi and I would recommend this to anyone interested in sci-fi about artificial intelligence.

I don't really do reviews, but after this game helped me through some hard times by feeling in control in 2017, coming back to the game now feels even more fulfilling. Many paths that I haven't even imagined to get to yet are still a mystery, like rescuing a president is crazy. Put on some music, have some drinks of your choice, and let the story take you. Every choice feels like it has an impact, either professional, military, cooperate, social, or just a bad choice like where I died early on thinking it cant really be a bomb. Check the game out even if its already past a decade (WHAT DO YOU MEAN 2014), its truly an adventure that can have many outcomes (like a cult, I want to start the cult, how!?!?!) Don't actually tell me how, I want to figure out how to be a robot nut job.