15 Sci-Fi CYOA Ideas: Futuristic Branching Adventures

Explore 15 science fiction Choose Your Own Adventure ideas. From space exploration to AI ethics, these concepts create thought-provoking interactive stories.

Science fiction’s “what if” questions pair perfectly with CYOA’s branching structure. Each choice explores different answers to the same speculative premise. These 15 ideas maximize sci-fi’s potential for meaningful decisions.

Space Exploration

1. The Generation Ship

Born aboard a ship that won’t reach its destination in your lifetime. Your choices about ship politics, resource allocation, and forbidden exploration affect not just your life but generations to come.

2. The First Colony

Leading humanity’s first extraterrestrial colony. Every decision about governance, expansion, and contact with native life shapes what kind of society you’ll build—and whether it survives.

3. The Salvage Run

Exploring derelict ships for valuable salvage. Each vessel has its own mystery about why it’s abandoned. Your choices about what to investigate and what to take determine what you discover—and what follows you home.

4. The Signal

You’ve intercepted an alien transmission. Your choices about whether to respond, what to say, and who to inform determine humanity’s first contact—for better or worse.

AI and Technology

5. The Upload

You’re one of the first to upload your consciousness to digital form. Your choices about what body to inhabit, whether to copy yourself, and how to relate to biologicals explore what makes you “you.”

6. The Companion AI

You’ve been assigned an AI companion whose personality adapts to your choices. The way you treat your AI shapes who they become—and what happens when they develop beyond their programming.

7. The Memory Market

In a world where memories can be bought and sold, your choices about what to sell, what to buy, and what to keep determine your identity—and what you discover was never really yours.

8. The Simulation Escape

You’ve discovered you’re in a simulation. Your choices about whether to escape, how to escape, and what you’ll do to escape reveal what matters to you—and what the simulation was testing.

Dystopian Futures

9. The Resistance

Living under an oppressive system. Your choices about compliance, small rebellions, and joining the resistance determine your survival, your integrity, and the future you help create.

10. The Resource Wars

Resources are running out. Your choices about allegiance, morality, and sacrifice determine which groups survive—and what humanity becomes in the process.

11. The Surveillance State

Every action is monitored. Your choices about conformity, workarounds, and revolution determine whether you stay safe, stay free, or stay yourself.

Time and Dimension

12. The Time Tourist

You can visit any historical period. Your choices about where to go, what to change, and what consequences to accept create ripples that change the present you return to.

13. The Parallel Lives

You can glimpse your life in parallel universes. Your choices about which lives to observe and which lessons to learn affect whether you improve your reality or lose yourself in possibilities.

14. The Loop

Trapped in a time loop with others who remember each reset. Your choices about cooperation, experimentation, and sacrifice determine whether you escape—and at what cost.

15. The Fold

Space is folding, bringing distant locations together randomly. Your choices about exploration, settlement, and the aliens also affected by the fold determine humanity’s place in a changing universe.

Sci-Fi CYOA Design Tips

Ground the technology: Even fantastical tech needs consistent rules that make choices meaningful.

Use sci-fi for ethical dilemmas: Technology amplifies moral questions—AI rights, digital identity, resource allocation.

Show multiple futures: Different paths should lead to genuinely different futures, not just different routes to the same destination.

Make tech personal: The best sci-fi CYOA makes big ideas intimate through personal stakes and relationships.

Launch Your Adventure

Ready to create science fiction branching narratives? Multic’s visual story tools let you map complex timelines and branching paths—perfect for exploring every possibility.