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Number of Reviews: 27
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22 people found the following review helpful:
Giving Meaning To Art, December 4, 2009On the surface, Galatea is a relatively simple game. You are an art critic, and you are standing in one room of a gallery observing a piece of art. The piece of art and its podium are the only things in the room, and you can’t leave the room or the game ends. So there is really only one thing you can do: interact with the piece of art. Fortunately, the piece of art is Galatea, the statue come to life of the Cypriot sculptor Pygmalion from Greek myth. In the game, Pygmalion is gone now, for reasons not initially clear, but Galatea has a lot to say about him and herself if you choose to ask.
The game’s simple structure belies its careful construction (much like the eponymous statue herself). Nearly all of the gameplay involves asking Galatea questions and turning her answers into more questions to ask. Through discussion, you learn about Galatea’s past, how she was created, and, depending on what chain of dialog you choose to follow, what might be in her future. There is not a singular solution, but dozens, and most are distinct from each other, rather than variations on a theme.
I enjoyed the game thoroughly, though I did have to turn to a walkthrough to get more than a handful of endings. Ultimately, who Galatea is and why she exists is not predetermined. As you play the game, and approach certain paths, her responses change and she starts to more firmly manifest a single form. But the next time you play the game, she’ll be back to a blank slate again and your questions may push her destiny in another direction.
In concept, I find this style of gameplay intriguing. The idea that a character is nobody until she is interacted with; it definitely has potential as a metaphor for human existence and bears similarity to the idea of tabula rasa, first posited by Aristotle, another Grecian historical figure. Unfortunately, the concept is not directly embodied in the game very much – at least to my recollection – and is more of a meta-concept than a deliberate one. I would love to see a game use this idea more overtly, where a series of blank forms are given purpose and even history by the player through their interactions with them.
In any case, the execution of this idea is entertaining for a while but starts to lose its novelty the longer you play and start to see the seams at the edges. Once you start to understand how certain discussions lead to certain endings, you can see more clearly where Galatea’s purpose seems to shift dramatically from one question to the next if you don’t follow the preferred line of inquiry. So, in the end, the game glows with the wonder of possibility at first... then rapidly fades the longer you play with her.
Which is a shame, really, because that is the exact opposite of the progression of the player character – the art critic – in the game. It seems his initial reaction is one of boredom, but the longer he talks with Galatea, the more his interest grows and he begins to realize how much more she is than the simple plaque beside her podium states. I’m almost envious of the critic by the end, because in the endings where his life seems to progress alongside Galatea’s, it’s clear his eyes have been opened to possibilities that were never there before. It makes my growing awareness of the limitation of the game feel depressing in contrast.
But, then again, I cared what happened to Galatea, and that’s really the goal of any artist, right? To get me to care about their creation? Regardless of the ending you reach, Galatea has a strong voice that I really took to. I just wish we could both have reached a satisfying end.
4 of
13 people found the following review helpful:
A remarkable experiment., January 16, 2009This has to be one of the finest examples of NPC interactivity yet seen in IF. Speaking to an exhibit for 10 or 15 minutes might seem rather strange, but her variety of topics can take you from greek myths to the meaning of life and or death. Recommended for anyone wanting to see developments in IF characterization.
Other games have improved on her initial premise, that being to create the most interactive NPC. Her later works do more interesting things with conversation generally, but don't let this stop you from trying the first real effort to push the boundaries.
31 of
33 people found the following review helpful:
Overrated among Short's games, July 28, 2008Galatea is an intricately detailed work of high concept. I wanted to like it - I can't get enough NPC interaction, and this has somehow acquired a reputation as the best NPC out there. Despite this, I found this to be deeply flawed and ultimately unsatisfying, both as a character and as a work of IF.
There is really nothing to interact with except for Galatea herself. Her presentation as an animate statue is a clever vehicle for metatextual commentary, but it is also a bit of Turing-camouflage. This is just fine; it comes with the territory. But I found that it gave me little motivation to interact with Galatea except to test her repertoire and see what the fuss was about. Unfortunately, I felt that my options were limited (once I had guessed that they were possible) and that Galatea's repertoire - though larger than perhaps any other NPC I have encountered in a game - often felt canned.
That may be why I began to find it more satisfying to treat the whole thing as a story than to talk to Galatea as such. So I began to look for interesting endings. This was tedious because it required me to explore an apparently tractless space of possible conversations with few-to-no systematic clues. And this tedium was amplified by the amount of repetitive manipulation required to move Galatea's meters around to get into new combinations. These issues might have been addressed by a shallower conversation-tree, requiring fewer moves to get to endings, or by more systematic relationships between available actions and where they sent the game; either one amounts to handing over more control over where the game goes in the end. But this is also contrary to what I've gathered to be the basic philosophy of the game - to be deep and unpredictable, not to yield up all the endings. Beyond relatively unimportant bits like poor information on my options, I think it is this mismatch which made my response to Galatea so tepid.
Nonetheless, I doubt this would have become a factor if I had not felt that the process of talking with Galatea was only instrumentally worthwhile, as a way of getting paths through a game. Context - to be specific, the lack of it - may be part of that problem. I felt a nearly equivalent impact from Bob in She's Got a Thing for Spring even though his "mind" must be far smaller and less complex than Galatea's. Seen critically Bob is a largely unresponsive scriptoid, absent-minded and repetitive. But he has things he does, even if only in fiction; he lives somewhere, walks around, owns things, asks and offers, and speaks just enough of a social past to be a person rather than a a book. As a result, one is inclined to think that his mind is (or was). In the harsh spotlight, Galatea's glitches and her total absorption in her own memories make her more of an object than even a fictional and manufactured person.
5 of
20 people found the following review helpful:
Sex is NG, March 28, 2008I tried to ask about sex then the game ended... because sex is a NG conversation topic it seems.
I guess I mistook the piece of art for "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon".
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11 people found the following review helpful:
Interesting, but I couldn't get into it, November 7, 2007Although I really like the premise of this, and I had a fair bit of sympathy/empathy for Galatea-the-character, I don't feel I really enjoyed the game, despite around twenty replays. It may be my playing style, but I found it very easy to fall into repetitive dead-ends, and I never managed to find an ending that I thought was really satisfying.
I very much don't want this review to put anyone else off playing Galatea, though; the time spent on playing is a worthwhile gamble.
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42 people found the following review helpful:
Futile Guesswork, October 26, 2007Are you ready to be clobbered over the head with the 2x4 of modern man-hating female disparagement? If so, Galatea is the game for you. Many have crowed about the interactivity, but interactivity with a self-righteous female, statue or no, is not enjoyable. (Modern spineless males will enjoy the exercise in self-torture, doubtless.) Because the game goals are so vague, there's no real way to advance to the next state of conversation without playing an updated version of "guess the verb" called "guess the conversation topic". Thirty minutes of futile guesswork was enough for me. Galatea gets two stars for coding genius alone. As far as games go, it's a dud.
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13 people found the following review helpful:
Extensive interaction and characterization, October 21, 2007This 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.
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