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Hi everyone,

Longtime lurker, first time poster :)

I've been working on a storygame for a while now, but I'm struggling to "finalize" it. I'm hoping for some advice on how to carry it over the finish line. Here is the summary:

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Proto Singularity.

The technological singularity marks the moment where the growth of artificial intelligence becomes uncontrollable, resulting in unforeseeable changes to civilization. Many great thinkers, from Stephen Hawking to Elon Musk, believe that the singularity is not only inevitable, but that it result in the extension of humanity.

But you and your team at Altradyne believe there's a way for humanity to not only survive, but thrive in the technological singularity comes. You simply need to prevent artificial intelligence from surpassing human intelligence. Not by stopping AI, but by perfecting Natural Machine Intelligence. That is, putting human intelligence -- your own mind, to start -- into a machine.

Not everyone at Altradyne believes in your mission, and for good reason - your years-long project hasn't been showing promise, but not results. It's now on the verge of being cancelled unless you can demonstrate some kind of breakthrough in the coming months.

Can you develop Natural Machine Intelligence in time?
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Proto Singularity is philosophical journey into consciousness, and is told using a story-heavy, puzzle-solving storygame. You'll need to carefully balance time and resources to reach the more complex endings.

This storygame is intended to be played multiple times, and it may take a playthrough or two to get a feel for the mechanics. If you prefer to stick to the story, there's a somewhat hidden walkthrough early on that will explain how to play.
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The beginning, middle, and endings are basically written, but there are a few "backstory" pages that I've outlined, but I just keep getting writers block on. Every time I sit down to write one, I just stare at the screen and then move on to something else. Like... this message, or proofing, or tweaking/testing mechanics.

And on that note, the mechanics (mostly "time-based puzzles" I suppose?) are finished, but I'm worried that they're too easy. Or too difficult. So I keep adding clues, removing clues, tweaking difficulty, etc. I've been staring at it forever, so it all makes perfect sense to me. Should I err on the side of "too difficult" and have a walkthrough?

And lastly... do you recommend a "beta-test" period or something? I saw some storygames do that, but not all. Maybe feedback would help motivate me to finalize and publish this.

Did you write this yourself?

Yes... I'm not sure I understand what/why you're asking?

The summary feels like it was generated by an AI. If it was, I'd highly recommend against using it. AI just isn't at the level where it can write stuff that is interesting to human beings simply because it doesn't understand why humans like the things that they like.

Getting a proofreader to look through your story is never a bad idea. A fresh set of eyes can spot mistakes that you didn't even know were mistakes.

As for puzzle difficulty... a reader will only take the effort to play through difficult puzzles if you first get them invested into the game's story. They always have the option to just stop and read something else. So again, if AI was used, I'd highly recommend rewriting the story to make it appealing to humans. Maybe talk about the stress that you and your fellow teammates feel due to the fast-approaching deadline or something?

Thanks for the feedback! I started a new topic on AI-generated content.

It's very obvious I need a proofreader and fresh set of eyes.

You should probably try using some AI to generate a summary

So, once we reach the singularity, will AI become too lazy to write and use humans to generate their stories?