Tactical View

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The Kobayashi Maru is a Starfleet training simulation in which cadets are placed in command of the USS Enterprise and tasked with responding to a distress call from the civilian transport Kobayashi Maru, stranded in the Klingon Neutral Zone. You are in that test now, so do your best!

First, consult the Tactical View to get a 3D impression of the Enterprise's current situation. Then choose a decision below.

There are nine possible results. Your result matches you with a Star Trek character whose method of responding to the Kobayashi Maru resembles the choices you made in the simulation. Whether you fought, negotiated, retreated, or found an unexpected way out, your instincts align you with a particular officer's style of leadership and values. See if you can find all nine, though some of them may require... creative thinking.

Oh, come on. "The play's the thing," as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, or as was expressed in the original Klingon, "Qujlu'meH potlh 'oH." Maybe try taking the test a few different times, if you haven't already. I'll tell you if you really want to know, but are you sure you want to spoil it for yourself?

There is no way to win. The simulation is deliberately designed to have no winning outcome — the purpose is not to see whether a cadet can succeed, but to observe how they respond to an unwinnable scenario. That is, unless maybe there is a way to win?

The 3D tactical display is powered by the Smithsonian Voyager, a WebGL-based renderer for three-dimensional content. We offer thanks and preemptive apologies to the Voyager team for our very silly use of their technology here. Scenes are described using the IIIF Presentation API 4, an open standard for presenting contextualized digital objects in an interoperable fashion. This project explores how IIIF can be used to support interactive 3D storytelling. For the IIIF-inclined, each stage in the simulation is a Presentation Manifest with a Scene populated with 3D models and 2D images. Each scene has an associated supplementing Annotation in a separate JSON file that describes a Choice object of linking Annotations representing decisions. The linking Annotations link each Manifest to subsequent simulation stages. The manifests and website code are available on GitHub.

Julie Winchester created the manifests and developed the website code, which are available on GitHub. All manifests and website code are open source and free to be reused. The assets used are the property of their respective creators, and are used here under appropriate licenses with sincere thanks. Details on asset origins, credits, and licensing are available in ASSETS.md on GitHub.