THE THING WE BUILT:

Desert Radio

Post-apocalyptic stories are having a moment.

The Last of Us has us crying over mushroom zombies.

Station Eleven made pandemic Shakespeare cool.

Fallout turned nuclear annihilation into water cooler talk.

But creating an immersive end-of-the-world experience typically requires Hollywood budgets, CGI departments, and at least one actor named Pedro. What if you could craft an atmospheric wasteland adventure with just a few API calls?

So we built a thing.

Desert Radio choose-your-own-adventure

How it works:

• Enter a mysterious abandoned desert radio station in an interactive web experience

• Make choices that shape the story as you explore the post-apocalyptic setting

• Experience unique AI-generated illustrations for each scene, creating a consistent lo-fi visual style

• Listen to atmospheric narration that brings the story to life with ElevenLabs voice generation

• Uncover the mysteries of The Anchor broadcast in a personalized adventure that’s different each time

Things we learned from the thing:

1. 𝗔𝗜 𝗼𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘂𝗽. After our Scout experiment, we’ve been relying more and more on LangChain as a reliable way to juggle multiple AI services. Coordinating story generation, image creation, and audio narration used to feel like herding digital cats. Now it’s more like conducting a slightly unpredictable orchestra.

2. 𝗟𝗼-𝗳𝗶 𝗮𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀. It’s hard to get a consistent aesthetic with image generation tools like DALL-E. By embracing a deliberately lo-fi, sketchy look, we tried to turn that limitation into a feature. The slight variations between scenes might even enhance the dreamlike quality of exploration. Newer models can handle text, but they’re slow—so we crafted prompts to avoid it when possible.

3. 𝗩𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲. A simple text adventure can feel flat, but add voice narration and suddenly players are immersed. The ElevenLabs integration was a substantial step up from our Coach! experiment, creating a more cinematic experience with minimal extra work.

4. 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘀. Our first version had a tendency to loop or dead-end—like a choose-your-own-adventure book where every path leads to page 37. We learned to add subtle story constraints to keep things moving forward while still giving players meaningful choices. It’s a balance between structure and freedom—something traditional game designers have wrestled with for decades. We’re still refining it, but it feels like a solid foundation for the next experiment.

PS: If you find the “Emergency Broadcast System” still running in 2047, don’t follow its instructions. Trust us, the government’s evacuation plan to the “safe zone” is just a Walmart parking lot with extra vending machines.

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