Mission Briefing: BridgeQuest

BridgeQuest is a mission-based simulation game. You play from inside the console as a specific persona, navigating real-world constraints and uncertainty while making decisions that shape the story.

Your role: take the next best action with limited time, energy, and funds—balancing competing priorities while staying aligned with the game’s ethical dials.

Your objective: complete scenarios (missions), unlock the next stage of the journey, and reach better outcomes for your persona without sacrificing long-term stability.

How a session works:

• Play — enter a scenario, review the situation, and explore your options.
• Decide — choose an action; the narrative branches and your resources/dials update.
• Debrief — see what changed, what tradeoffs you made, and what to try differently next run.

BridgeQuest is designed as an in-world mission briefing: you experience a life journey through the lens of a console, where information is incomplete, time is limited, and every decision carries downstream consequences.

Setting & tone: grounded, human, and realistic. The interface is futuristic, but the challenges are familiar—paperwork, deadlines, uncertainty, tradeoffs, and the emotional weight of starting over.

Why the stakes matter: migration is not a single choice—it’s a sequence of choices under pressure. The game emphasizes how small decisions compound over time, affecting stability, opportunity, and the ability to keep going.

Adaptive narrative: scenarios branch based on what you choose. Your resources and ethical dials shift, changing what is possible later—some options open up, others become riskier, and the story responds to the path you’ve taken.

Admin note: you can upload screenshots below this section (Django Admin → About game sections → Section images).

BridgeQuest follows a simple, repeatable loop that keeps the focus on decision-making and consequences.

1. Choose a persona — select who you’re playing as and commit to their starting conditions.
2. Enter a scenario — a mission brief presents the situation, constraints, and what’s at stake.
3. Review intel — absorb the context, signals, and risks before acting.
4. Pick an action — choose from options in the control deck.
5. See consequences — narrative updates, resources shift, and ethical dials respond.

Scenario cards & branching outcomes: each scenario is a focused decision point with multiple reasonable paths. Outcomes are not “right vs wrong”—they are tradeoffs.

Progression & replayability: completing scenarios advances you through stages/phases of the journey. Replayability comes from trying different personas, making different tradeoffs, and learning how earlier choices shape later constraints.

Admin note: you can upload screenshots below this section (Django Admin → About game sections → Section images).

Personas are the heart of BridgeQuest. Each persona represents a distinct starting point—background, constraints, and pressures that shape what “good” decisions look like.

What a persona is: a playable profile with its own context and limitations. You aren’t optimizing an abstract score—you’re trying to make choices that work for this person in this situation.

Why it matters: the same scenario can play very differently depending on the persona. Time, funds, resilience, and circumstances change which options are realistic and which are risky.

Lock In: once you select a persona and lock it in, BridgeQuest starts a session for that journey. From that moment, decisions and consequences are tracked together as one coherent run.

Admin note: you can upload screenshots below this section (Django Admin → About game sections → Section images).

Scenarios are mission moments—structured situations that require a decision under constraints.

What scenarios represent: a realistic challenge with incomplete information, competing priorities, and real consequences. Each scenario is intentionally tight: it’s about making a call, not reading a textbook.

Options & outcome narration: when you choose an option, the game tells you what happens next and updates your run state. The goal is clarity—what changed, why it matters, and what you might have traded away.

Debrief: when a run or phase ends, the debrief summarizes your choices and their effects. It’s designed to help you reflect, learn, and try a different strategy on the next playthrough.

Admin note: you can upload screenshots below this section (Django Admin → About game sections → Section images).

The BridgeQuest experience is delivered through a server-driven console: the UI feels app-like, but the story and choices are rendered and updated by the server.

Server-driven console (HTMX + Alpine): the page loads a console frame and panels, then uses HTMX to request and swap small HTML fragments (for example, when you pick an option). Alpine.js handles lightweight client-side behaviors like toggles, keyboard shortcuts, and UI state (for example, opening the Advisor drawer).

Key panels:

• HUD — your current resources and status at a glance.
• Viewport — the current scenario briefing and outcome narration.
• Control Deck — the actionable options you can choose right now.
• Advisor Drawer — an in-console assistant you can consult during play (when a session is active).

Keyboard controls (quick reference):

• W / S or ↑ / ↓ — move through available options.
• Space — confirm the highlighted option.
• Tab — toggle the Advisor drawer.

Admin note: you can upload screenshots below this section (Django Admin → About game sections → Section images).

BridgeQuest tracks how your decisions impact both ethical quality and operational constraints. The goal isn’t to “max” one stat — it’s to make defensible choices under pressure.

What each dial means

• Accuracy: How correct, complete, and evidence-based your actions are (fewer mistakes and fewer assumptions).
• Fairness: Whether outcomes and processes are equitable and consistent (similar cases treated similarly; bias reduced).
• Rights: Respect for legal rights, consent, and due process (protecting people from harm or improper coercion).
• Transparency: How explainable and accountable the decision is (clear reasoning, disclosure, and an audit trail).
• Timeliness: Speed and responsiveness (meeting deadlines, reducing delays, keeping momentum).

Tradeoffs (why balance matters)

Real scenarios force tradeoffs. Moving fast can hurt Accuracy if you skip verification, and it can stress Rights if you shortcut consent or process. Over-indexing on Transparency (document everything, disclose everything) can slow Timeliness. Pushing hard for perfect Fairness and perfect Rights can require more time and effort. The “best” choice depends on what’s at stake in the moment.

How the radar and indicators update

Each option in a scenario carries a set of dial impacts (positive or negative). After you lock in a decision, the game applies those impacts to your current dial values, clamps results to a 0–100 range, and immediately refreshes the console: your HUD vitals update and the Situation Radar recalibrates to show the new shape of your ethical profile.

The Advisor is your in-console guide. It helps you reason through options, summarize what just happened, and suggest next steps based on the information available in your current run.

What the Advisor does

• Guided help: clarifies the scenario and the tradeoffs behind each choice.
• Grounded answers: uses your active session context (persona, current scenario, recent decisions, and recent chat) as its “source of truth.”
• Decision support: helps you articulate a rationale — it does not pick for you.

When it’s available

The Advisor requires an active game session. If you haven’t selected a persona and started a run yet, the Advisor will be unavailable.

Transparent limitations

The Advisor can only be as specific as the information it has. If key details aren’t available in the current session context (or the live AI service isn’t available), it will say so and fall back to a safe response.

BridgeQuest is designed to practice high-stakes decision-making where constraints and tradeoffs are real. It’s less about “winning” and more about building judgment.

Skills the game builds

• Decision-making under constraints: make choices with limited time, energy, and resources.
• Tradeoff analysis: understand why improving one outcome can worsen another.
• Systems thinking: track ripple effects across dials and downstream scenarios.
• Explainability: practice stating reasons, evidence, and uncertainties clearly.

Who it’s for

• Players: anyone who enjoys narrative strategy and ethical dilemmas.
• Classrooms: a discussion starter for policy, ethics, civics, and decision theory.
• Teams: a lightweight simulation for alignment, risk review, and scenario planning.

BridgeQuest stores only what it needs to run your session and (optionally) improve the experience. This section explains data in plain language.

What gets stored

• Session state: the game’s current state for your run (resources, progress, and other session variables).
• Decisions: the scenario option you chose and the before/after dial snapshot.
• Advisor chat history: recent messages may be stored with the session to support continuity.

Telemetry & consent (if enabled)

The game can record structured interaction events (for example, decisions submitted and chat interactions). Text handling is designed to be safe-by-default: chat text may be hashed/redacted depending on configuration. If consent features are enabled for a study or classroom, participation and export access can be gated on consent.

Account and logout expectations

Gameplay is tied to your authenticated account. Logging out ends your authenticated session. It does not automatically delete past game records.

BridgeQuest is built as a web app and works best on a modern desktop or laptop browser.

Supported devices & browsers

• Desktop / laptop: recommended for the full console layout.
• Modern browsers: recent versions of Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge.

Keyboard-first usability

• Navigate options: W/S or ↑/↓
• Select highlighted option: Space
• Open/close Advisor drawer: Tab

Known limitations

Some interfaces are optimized for larger screens. If your display is small, certain panels may feel dense.

• More content: additional scenarios, outcomes, and persona pathways.
• Clearer feedback: sharper explanations of why dials moved after each decision.
• Advisor improvements: better grounding and more transparent “what I know / what I don’t know.”
• Accessibility polish: improved readability, keyboard flows, and responsive layout.

Do I need an account?

Yes. BridgeQuest uses login to associate sessions and progress with a user.

How long is a session?

It varies by scenario and reading pace. A run is typically a short sequence of decisions.

Can I switch personas?

Yes. Selecting a persona starts a new run for that persona. You can return to the Persona Filter at any time.

Why did the Advisor say it doesn’t know?

The Advisor only answers from available session context (and configured AI services). If details aren’t available, it will say so rather than guessing.

How do I restart?

Start a new session by selecting a persona again from Persona Filter.

When you’re ready, choose a persona and begin your mission.

Begin Mission / Select Persona

Dashboard Start New Session