Galatea

5 star: (114) 4 star: (131) 3 star: (58) 2 star: (20) 1 star: (9)

Average Rating: Number of Ratings: 332 Write a review

- Pseudo_Intellectual (Vancouver, Canada), October 25, 2007

- John Murphy (Lebanon, NH, USA), October 24, 2007

- David Garcia, October 21, 2007

- Brian Campbell, October 21, 2007

This is the work I recommend most highly of all interactive fiction.

Galatea exemplifies wonderful characterization, character interaction, and open-ended (within a very small framework, granted) gameplay. The entirety of the game takes place in one room and is made up of interactions (primarly conversation) with the statue-character named Galatea. Reaching an ending is not hard, but making the choices to find every ending that one wants is a challenging endeavor.

Facade (known as a landmark in character interaction and AI) is very derivative of this system of gameplay, though it is far less interesting or involving.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  

More Options

Promote this user

Demote this user

Plonk this user

Flag spoilers

Flag as inappropriate

Direct link

View my user filters

Explain these options

 | Add a comment 

- robkun (London, UK), October 20, 2007

- Gregory (USA), October 20, 2007

Baf's Guide

Retells the myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor whose statue came to life; here, you're interacting with the statue herself (she's on a pedestal in a museum as an "animate"), and getting her perspectives on a wide variety of things. As such, this is a one-room game that consists entirely of interactions with one NPC--but what an NPC it is. This is the only IF I've ever seen that tried to give an NPC a thoroughly complex psychology--the same question can elicit a wide variety of responses depending on the character's mood, which in turn depends on a variety of things, including the progress of the conversation up to that point. Nor is this simply a portrait of a complex character--your developing relationship with her affects both how you see her and how she reacts. There are no puzzles as such, but the game offers numerous endings that resolve the conversation one way or another, and some of the endings are more satisfying than others. A hint at what NPCs can be with enough attention; considering that the Z-machine code runs to nearly 260K, bigger than many good-sized games, Galatea also suggests that the amount of programming needed to achieve this degree of complexity is not small. Intriguing and rewarding.

-- Duncan Stevens