The Ethics Engine is a seven-episode narrative decision game set in the fictional city of Meridian. You are its civic steward. An advisory AI called LENS can estimate what a policy might do, but it cannot decide what the city owes its people. In each 15–20 minute episode you interview residents, weigh records and data, choose an approach, fund safeguards within limited capacity and explain your reasoning, then see what follows, soon after and later on. Scholarships, hiring, heat, water, academic integrity, research data and campus safety: every decision costs someone something. There are no scores and no right answers.
Players learn to ask what is known, whose interests are missing, which commitments matter and how a decision could be challenged or improved. They practise separating facts, predictions and values; weighing personal testimony alongside records and data; and recognising what evidence cannot establish. They make decisions within real constraints (limited authority, fixed budgets, staff capacity and rights every option must keep), identify trade-offs and who bears their costs, and design safeguards such as explanation, appeal, independent review and participation. They justify choices with evidence, examine them through five ethical lenses, compare alternatives by replaying, and write their own civic principle.
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