Choice of Robots

I led a rebellion against the US, massacred thousands of civilians, razed cities to the ground, and took Alaska from em and gifted it to my loyal r0b0t commander, and right after that, without any pretext, I am in a hospital in mainland US being treated for being too smart.. How?

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.

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 gam…

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.

its okay for what it is

Back when I first played this, certain spoilery aspects felt "railroady" to me, but looking back it's obvious and well explained WHY things happened how they did. Overall, those were my only concerns. In this time of complex feelings towards large language modles, a story that places you as the one in charge of a thinking and growing machine? it really helps to emotionally encapsulate people's concerns with AI in the modern day while ALSO giving you something crunchy and and entertaining.