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About the StoryEmily Short's description: Game Details
Language: English (en-US)
Current Version: 3 License: Freeware Development System: Inform Forgiveness Rating: Merciful Baf's Guide ID: 1326
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IF-Review
Dreams, Hubris, and Getting Away with Both
And so perhaps we have a trinity collaborating on this work: the Author, the Reader, and the Subject, Galatea. We affect her by what we choose to write and what we choose to read, but she affects us too, when we see what story we have written and ponder what it can mean.
-- Jonathan Rosebaugh
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Jay Is Games
No foray into the realm of interactive fiction would be complete without playing this game.
-- JohnB
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PopMatters
Galatea is an exploration and a treatise on what art is. It repurposes the original myth of a creator and his art, which had come to life, and tells the next step in such a process, one in which the created work moves beyond the artist and meets the audience.
-- Eric Swain
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SPAG
A 300K-plus Z-machine file that essentially consists entirely of one character should give any designer pause, if that's the standard for realistic NPC design. It 's unquestionable, though, that this character represents a quantum leap--in intelligence and in vividness of personality--and that the author did it with essentially the tools that every author has. Designers, consider the goalposts moved.
-- Duncan Stevens
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Electronic Book Review
Galatea’s Riposte: The Reception and Receptacle of Interactive Fiction
Each time I access “Galatea,” Emily Short’s fabulous piece of interactive fiction, a supple string of text hails me, flirts with me, and stops just short of calling me by name. Strictly speaking, this mode of address should not be possible, at least not according to the familiar conventions of literary tradition... [W]orks such as Galatea function both as operative images in Wiener’s terms and as receptacles, peculiar intermediaries between form and copy. More than mimetic, more than metaphorical, such works don’t merely simulate responses; through a perspectival process of reciprocal second person, they enact them.
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Rock Paper Shotgun
Letters of Love: Galatea
From this perspective, it’s all about growing up and learning to understand what’s alien. It’s about dropping pretenses, egos and prejudices. It’s about realising the value of others’ creations, and never losing sight of your own role relating to them. It’s about learning to accept criticism, even as a critic. It’s about becoming more measured, but also understanding that wearing your heart on your sleeve is okay. It is, in essence, the same journey I’m having to embark on, as I take my first steps into this scary world of writing about videogames.
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Adventure Gamers
The titular NPC has more complexity and psychology than any NPC in the history of IF.
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Pornokitsch
She will become your creation the longer you engage her, putting you in the Pygmalion position, which can be just as uncomfortable as her pedestal...
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80% Relatable
Two Queers Play Galatea: Statuesque
August is nearly over, and this month, our patrons asked for us to play a game from famed interactive fiction author Emily Short! We went back to some of the earliest work in her catalogue to find Galatea--a short character piece that features several different permutations on a conversation with the titular sculpture. It's the first time we've played a proper text-based adventure game on the channel, so we hope you'll enjoy!
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50 Years of Text Games, by Aaron A. Reed
When Marnie Parker announced the third IF Art Show in early 2000, Short decided she would enter. A handful of intriguing Still Life and Landscape entries had appeared in the first two shows, but no one had yet attempted a Portrait. Short decided she would try.
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In the spirit of the Art Show prompt, she conceived of a premise that stripped interaction down to a single conversation: a parser game with most of the standard verbs removed, no puzzles nor inventory items, and a single room containing nothing but a woman on a pedestal [...]
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The game grew to encompass hundreds of possible responses and at least seventy distinct conclusions, with far more possible paths to reaching them. And not all the Galateas you meet across the overlapping space of possible playthroughs are the same.
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