Comments on: Letters Of Love: Galatea

By: MOOncalF

MOOncalF — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:03:44 +0000

Played this once several years ago and found it a charming experience I tried and failed to explain to just about everyone who would listen. I wonder how many IF authors have been picked up as writers for graphic videogames, you’d think it’d be a no-brainer place to look for them.

By: Στέλιος

Στέλιος — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 09:43:34 +0000

I’d love to say that I found this was amazing and all that but the parser was just getting in the way far too much for me to get to go through the experience. The two-three (short) playthroughs certainly seemed interesting though.

By: malkav11

malkav11 — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:12:50 +0000

While it’s true that it can sometimes be frustrating trying to get a piece of IF to parse what you’d like to do, parsers have actually improved tremendously since the heyday of commercial IF, as will become quite obvious if you try to go back to games from back then (early Infocom titles drive me nuts). You just need to get a feel for how to approach things. Once you do that, most modern IF can be quite rewardingly interacted with. (Just don’t hope for much from the lower end of most IFComps).

By: cjlr

cjlr — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 02:20:58 +0000

Well, I played through a couple more times… Having that ol’ IF state of mind come back helped. You can’t, however, put Galatea in your pocket. Nor, as far as I could tell, could you in any way interact with the spotlight – and boy, did I spend quite some time trying. Anyway…

Bizarre. That’s my one-word summation. Not that it’s not very interesting. After all, I wouldn’t call 2001 anything other than bizarre, and nobody’s denying that that’s brilliant. It’s difficult, to play – in first person – a character who’s not you, you know? “I was never a child,” she says, so I enter, ‘t child’, and find ‘myself’ (the PC) divulging heartfelt anecdotes from ‘my’ childhood – interesting, sure, but not really what I (the player) intended. AFGNCAAP might be taking things to extremes, but it happened for a reason.

Lastly, much as I tried, I could not resist playing the Yes track Turn of the Century as a soundtrack. Repeatedly.

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:09:35 +0000

I’ve tried Galatea my share of times, but always find I’m too English. ‘Oh’, I say, ‘how awful’. And then I change the subject. And I can’t play any other way.

I think metamorphoses is beautiful, one of the best games ever.

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:16:29 +0000

Just to throw my five pence in: Galatea’s amazing.

By: Lewis

Lewis — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:07:21 +0000

I did decide I wanted to write about computer games as a job, after all.

By: Lewis

Lewis — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:06:11 +0000

Yeah, assuming I’m sane is probably a bit unwise.

By: Serondal

Serondal — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:01:09 +0000

Where is the proof that he is sane? I don’t even gush over my wife like this and I love her more than anything in the world

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:55:02 +0000

More Interactive Fiction please! I was into this a year or so ago and there’s some amazing stuff out there. People have mentioned Spider and Web, and I’d add Anchorhead to that for some more traditional, adventurey-puzzley fare.

For some reason, back then I found Galatea incredibly offputting and stopped after my first go. But since it can apparently cause an artgasm in otherwise sane games journos maybe I shall try it again ;)

By: Serondal

Serondal — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:07:28 +0000

Lewis I think the better question would be how many IFs have they played peroid ;) You sound like you have a lot of experience with IF where as other people may not. I think the most experience I had was the mentioned Star trek pron IF and a few Zork games that I never finished. I did play a lot of Muds/muhs ect but that is a totally diffrent kind of IF that allows a much greater level of freedom when talking to other characters since they’re actaully humans.

By: Lewis

Lewis — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:51:33 +0000

I find myself genuinely surprised that people aren’t finding it to have their desired level of freedom with the interactions. How many IFs have you played that let you chat to an NPC about the nature of the universe?