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Unlike most Infocom games, AMFV was not a puzzle game, having only a single puzzle near the end of the game. Also uncharacteristic of Infocom games, and Meretzky's in particular, was that the game had a serious tone and also a political theme. The game is among the most respected, though not the best-selling, Infocom has ever published. It was also the first of the "Interactive Fiction Plus" line, meaning that, unlike earlier Infocom games that used version 3 of the Z-machine, AMFV used the more advanced version 4, which had greater memory requirements.
The player controls PRISM, the world's first sentient computer, in the year 2031. The economy of the United States of North America (USNA) is failing, and a new arms race, involving nuclear weapons no larger than the size of a common pack of cigarettes, threatens to turn the USNA into a police state. PRISM lived 20 years as a simulated male human named Perry Simm (which sounds like "PRISM" when said quickly). The player may control this alter-ego through Rockvil, South Dakota, in simulations of the future in order to test a new government plan.