Galatea, is a stone women who the reader, meaning you, is having a conversation with, the reader asks many questions and listens to her life. During this interactive piece you learn a lot about this character and the experiences that she has gone through, when she was stone. When you are talking to Galatea, there are many commands that are happening, when she types to you, it is called an output, because the computer is writing the text, but when you are writing the text, it becomes an input which Montfort discusses. And that gives you the back and forth conversations. These commands happen all throughout the Interactive piece.
When you begin this piece, you start off with a prologue, which is shown in the screenshot above, which is a description of the IF world given before there is any opportunity for the instructor to give a command, which Montfort talks about in her article, and it explains what is going on or about to happen. Here he talks about you, the reader(Montfort), walking over to meet Galatea and the first like she says, “They told me you were coming," and this as well gives you a brief description of where she is "sitting on a pedestal." There are many ways that you can play this game and many opportunities that are given to talk to her and ask her questions. When she talks about her life, listen to her and ask her questions about it, and also ask her any questions that you may feel could help with the conversation. A lot of the questions I had asked were about her maker and the stone that she was made out of, and then later when she I believe was comfortable I asked about deeper connections, like family, friends, love, to see what she believed and her experiences with it. And then I told her my experiences with family, and how mine are different then hers. There is a word that I can describe this game by and it is a first date, you are getting to know her and it is personal, and you the reader are trying to keep her interested and keep talking.
When she keeps talking to you and you get her to open up and move to front profile, which you can see at the top of the screen, then you are doing a good job. In this image above, the view is one-quarter profile. And when I mean front profile, when you start the game, she is not looking at you, he back is to you, but when she gets more comfortable she slowly begins to turn and then finally if she is very comfortable she might even sit with you and the bonding will grow stronger. But that is only if you find the connections to her and if you ask the right questions at the right time. This whole interactive fiction piece is diegetic which means; anything that is a part of the world of the story, because Galatea does not go out of the story like a Extra-Diegetic, which is not a part of the story. By Montfort telling this it explains the setting of the story because it does not change at all, which is said above.
When you are talking to her you are in the same setting the whole time, but it feels like you could be somewhere else because of the descriptions. When she talks about the water and her master she brings you to where she was made and the descriptions almost make you feel like you are there.
This game took me a while to figure out what to say to get her to open up to me, and there are many different ways you can talk to her, there is a help guideline, if you type the word “Help” in then you will be able to read the command that was given and in there is a website that gives you a cheat-sheet which will help you with how you talk to her, which is shown in the picture above. All of these are ways that will help you further in the game, so that you do not get frustrated. Once you figure out all of these hints and Galatea opens up to you will see how the game works and soon enough you will be getting to the end of the game. You know the game is over when you get the words “restore”, “quite” or “restore” and these words are called directives as seen in Montfort’s article, which is shown in the picture below. When you get to these words you know that you finished the game or if you left on your own.
My personal opinion of this game is that it is both a game as well as a story. I think that it is a game because it is a date in my eyes, and I think that you are trying to win over her and get her comfortable enough to open up to you. And you get here by trying different techniques on her just like you would do on a date. It could also be a puzzle because when you learn something about Galatea you could be trying to put all the pieces of her life together to understand what exactly she has gone through, throughout her life. This is a good way to look at the game-like aspect because then you will be able to learn and listen to her and put everything together to get an initial theme, which in this story I feel could be Galatea being lonely, because she didn’t realy have any one to talk to, just people looking at her. And when you finish the whole piece then you will be able to figure out what you feel about her and her life.
In Buckles Article with the link at the end of this blog says that the If has roots in, counterparts in various kinds of literature. And Buckles is right because in this IF piece there are types of literature, it was like a story and there was no stopping in talking, there was always a way to think of something when you are talking to Galatea and to keep the conversation going. And it is literature as well as a game because when you are on a date with someone you just don’t think of it as a game or puzzle but it is trying to find the right words to say and what she is going to respond to you. When you are playing this game you know that actions have consequences as well as the choices that you make, and when you are on a date or in this case talking to Galatea you are going to going to try to make the best choices that you can with your words so that you can impress her. And when you are going through the story you are learning about the character Galatea as well as yourself, and without literature that would not have happened in this IF piece.
Bibliography for the articles mentioned above:
Montfort, Nick. Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. Fist MIT Press, 2003.
Buckes, Mary Anne. Interactive Fiction as Literature.
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