My project seeks to explore the narrative potential of generative AI, realizing the broad idea of constructing narratives in real-time through the simplified, detached format of stand-alone short stories.

To accomplish this goal, I will divide my project into two phases. The first phase refers to the scaffolding of my project—I must build a visual novel game in Unity, constructing an architectural system of my own design to best support the degree of freedom offered by the gameplay’s time-travel themed functionality. The completion of the first phase will see a “finished” visual novel game, as well as the necessary framework for the implementation of generative AI into the game. Meanwhile, in the second phase, I must link an online Large Language Model to Unity and engage in automating prompt engineering to obtain relevant narrative output that can be implemented as additional “side quests” to enhance the final game. Lastly, upon the reasonable conclusion of the second phase of this project, I will initiate a round of preliminary playtesting to collect player feedback on the quality of the narratives generated by AI and make appropiate edits.

The final product that I envision at the conclusion of this project would be an entirely functional visual novel-style video game that incorporates generative AI to build short side narratives that the player can explore upon the conclusion of the main narrative playthrough. To fully bring this fictional world to life, I will be collaborating with Nicole Lai, a fellow Senior Project student who will help me in authoring our main narrative, while also providing me with the visuals and animations of our game.