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Sweet, sad, funny fiction with few puzzles, December 12, 2020I first played Photopia about 15 years ago and cried at the ending. It took me a while to figure out how the different vignettes fit together and it hit me hard. I had never experienced such emotion playing a silly text adventure. I will always love that about Photopia.
I played the game last night over Zoom with my sister and her two adult sons, introducing them to their first IF experience. They quickly found the boundaries of the interpreter and explored. (What happens if I go north forever? Can I "x up"? How come I can't use this verb which is in the sentence above?) In the end they enjoyed it describing it as a choose-your-own-adventure book or the tabletop role-playing game Expedition.
There are so many clever bits I saw the second time through, how the game feels huge and open and yet is really just railroading through the story. They found rooms I hadn't found in my first playthrough which was a delight. They figured out to just hit "z" when it was clear their actions had no affect (rather than trying to speak to the NPCs). There was one moment when they accidentally hit something and started the next "chapter" before finishing reading the end of the previous vignette. There's no way to go back or scroll up to see what they missed. (We were playing the web version at iplayif.com.)
They want to play another game together sometime over Zoom. (Not the Z-code interpreter.) Thank you, Adam Cadre, for bringing us long-distance joy!