- 01Hear the line
- 02See the reply window
- 03Respond or stay silent
- 04Read the reaction
Timed replies and deliberate silence
Conversation continues while replies have a time window; silence and interruption need defined outcomes.
The player's decision
Interrupt now or listen and risk losing the reply window?
Original scenario
Original: interrupting a repairer's leak explanation misses the material requirement; listening supports a more informed offer.
Start with this prototype
Build three short exchanges with two replies and explicit silence branches. Offer pause/extended reading time and recap timing choices; do not test speed with long text.
Change one variable
Scale windows to text length and compare listening with interruption.
What to observe in a playtest
Pause timers and verify reading windows across languages.
Take the full design card
Includes rules, scope, tuning questions and sources for further planning. It does not create a project automatically.
Original analysis · version 1
Common pitfall
Auto-selecting spoken replies on timeout misrepresents silence as agreement.
Observations and sources
Cases refer to public documentation. Developers and community wikis are credited separately; document review is not a claim of hands-on testing.
- OXENFREE
Tim Schafer's design observation notes natural dialogue that can be interrupted and redirected.
- The Walking Dead
A 2015 player discussion documents timed dialogue/silence and the reading-pressure tradeoff.
Brief for the studio
Opens the AI studio with the brief below in the input. You can edit it. Nothing starts automatically.
Build three short exchanges with two replies and explicit silence branches. Offer pause/extended reading time and recap timing choices; do not test speed with long text.
Covers are original AI-generated style illustrations. Game names reference publicly visible design choices and remain the property of their owners. This atlas does not supply screenshots or assets from those games. Prompts and combinations are original drafts for new games.