Reviews by TempestDash

Alabaster, in retrospect, is very, very similar to Galatea, an earlier work from Emily Short. This time you are playing a fractured version of Snow White. You are the Huntsman, that poor servant who is instructed by the Queen to kill Snow White and return with her heart in a box. The game begins as you are walking through the forest with Snow White and stop to examine a dead animal on the path from which you intend to extract a heart to fool the Queen with. Apart from Snow White and the dead animal, there is nothing else to interact with. And moving in any direction is interpreted by the game as the decision to either return to the castle or travel to the safe haven populated by seven dwarves. Your only means of making up your mind as to which place you should go to is to interact with Snow White, and she has a lot to say if you ask her.

Unlike Galatea, however, Snow White’s identity is not shaped by the questions you ask. Whether you find out who and what she is does depend on the questions you ask, but the game makes pretty clear that even if you don’t ask the right questions, her nature is the same.

This is both a benefit and a drawback in my opinion. Where in Galatea after a while you could see the seams in her programming that allow her destiny to change based on what questions you ask in what order, here Snow White’s responses are uniform, and the tiny hints always line up with the broad declarations. The integrity of the game’s characters is maintained.

On the other hand, once you figure out what’s going on with Snow White, getting the other endings is often an exercise in willful ignorance, which is not very satisfying. The very first ending I got in the game, in fact, revealed to me her true nature, which would have made subsequent playthroughs pretty disappointing had there not been one extra action I initially had overlooked that helped me to realize that Snow White’s real face was not the only mystery the game had to offer.

Still, the game’s world – as limited as it is – is very well defined and the prose is very enjoyable, as I’ve come to expect from Emily Short’s games. Of course, not all the prose came from Short.

The other ‘feature’ of this game has nothing to do with how it’s played, actually, but has to do with its genesis. The game was an exercise in collaborative storytelling, initiated by Short and offered up to the IF community for expansion. She had written the initial description and created the environment, but then let everyone who played the development version of the game offer additional dialog choices and responses. Short collated all these options and integrated them into the game, lining up the dialog trees and creating endings for certain lines of discussion. So, really, the game has many, many authors, who have all been corralled into a gameplay mechanic devised by Short.

So, in conclusion, the game is enjoyable the first few times around, and there really is a lot to discover about this version of the Snow White fairy tale. The multiple endings start to wear thin after a while, which may be unavoidable but since there are so many offered I have to believe that it was intended at least for some players to try to get them all. The experiment in collaborative story development, however, is pretty clearly a success, as the game is well written, imaginative, and cohesive, yet still has nearly a dozen authors. I dare the movie industry to do so well.

On 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.