Photopia

Baf's Guide

Scenes from a handful of ordinary lives alternate with chapters of a child's colorful science-fantasy. Sweet and sad, and complex enough that you may need to go through it twice in order to fully understand how all the fragments fit together. Very story-driven, with menu-based conversations and virtually no puzzle content. My only complaint is that it isn't terribly interactive - indeed, you're practically driven through it on tracks, and any actions that you don't take tend to be rendered unnecessary. But the story is intriguing enough, and well-written enough, and moving enough, that this seems a small quibble. This is probably the most successful example I've seen of interactivity at the service of fiction, rather than vice versa.

The author intended this game to be played with colored text. Although I normally dislike such things, I agree that it works in this case. A monochrome version is also provided for those who feel differently.

(NB: The first release of this game credits Opal O'Donnell as the author. This was a deliberate deception on the part of the real author, carried out with the permission of the real Opal O'Donnell.)

-- Carl Muckenhoupt

Adventure Gamers
About twenty minutes in, when the series of seemingly disconnected and unordered scenes snaps into place and you understand what is happening, every emotional bone you possess will tingle sharply, and your pounding heart will carry you through to the inevitable conclusion of the story. You will understand, as I did, the emotional impact that a story can have. I have cried each of the three times I have played through Photopia; it is that darn powerful.
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Brass Lantern

[...] the overall layout of the story appears to be a complex weave, where you travel along the thread as it makes its way in one direction, turns around and comes back, crossing the previous parts of the weave and then continues. [...] In summary, this game is like an interactive story nestled inside another. A russian doll. A woven russian doll at that.
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Gaming Enthusiast
Not your usual adventure game, but if you look for some originality and ingenuity you’ve come to the right place.
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Necessary Games
Photopia: Not a Mediocre Short Story
Does Photopia deserve to be so hallowed as it is? Quantitatively, that question may be hard to tackle. In my mind, though, the game does, without a doubt, deserve to be hallowed to some degree. It is historically important both as a work of interactive fiction and as a game, for its numerous technical innovations, and for its minimalist interactive component that makes it such a great example of a “limiting case game.” Whether Photopia succeeds on the affective level is open for debate, but my opinion and your opinion notwithstanding, the fact that it clearly does succeed with so many people is a strong testament to Adam Cadre’s ability to innovate and impact all in the same breath.
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New Indian Express - Krish Raghav
The core of its emotional impact is its ability to turn this expectation of interaction in a traditional video-game narrative on its head, and use the LACK of interaction as a narrative form in itself. Events in Photopia hurtle towards their inescapable fate, and the jigsaw puzzle timeline provides occasional flashes of what that conclusion might be, and that sense of foreboding, created by glimpses of understanding as the plot slowly unravels, only intensifies as the game progresses.
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Play This Thing
Photopia made me cry.

That's not something I say often. I don't think any other work of art has ever affected me to the extent that Photopia has.
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PopMatters
As a text adventure, Photopia is a pared down example of such. There are few puzzles, and they don’t require much stress on the brain cells. Also, the whole game flows so naturally as a story that it could lead an outside observer to think that the work might be better off as a short story. However, just because a game isn’t interested in what is traditionally thought of as gameplay doesn’t mean that it isn’t utilizing the medium’s specific attributes to its advantage.
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SynTax
Photopia isn't strictly an adventure game, but more of an interactive story, or series of intertwining stories. For the most part I normally do not like this type of game and prefer lots of puzzles to solve. Photopia, however, grabbed my interest from the start.
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>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

The colors, like everything else in Photopia, worked beautifully, adding artfully to the overall impact of the story. The work is interactive in other important ways as well. In fact, in many aspects Photopia is a metanarrative about the medium of interactive fiction itself. Again, it wasn't until the end of the story that I understood why it had to be told as interactive fiction. And again, to explain the reason would be too much of a spoiler. I have so much more I want to talk about with Photopia, but I can't talk about it until you've played it. Go and play it, and then we'll talk. I promise, you'll understand why everyone has been so impatient. You'll understand why I loved it, and why I think it's one of the best pieces of interactive fiction ever to be submitted to the competition.
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SPAG
[Reviews by Paul O'Brian, Duncan Stevens, Brian Blackwell and David Ledgard]
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SPAG Specifics - Victor Gijsbers
Photopia's message is this: "Do not despair at death, for from the tiniest seeds we have sown, new and abundant life can come forth."
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XYZZY news
Photopia is an amazing piece of work; it has incited both criticism and praise for its masterful focus on story rather than on puzzles -- or, to use the popular analogy, on fiction rather than on interactivity. Because of this, its detractors have scorned it as being "not a game at all," and its supporters have hailed it as a breakthrough in the medium.

In a sense, both allegations are correct, and even self- predicting. Any game which breaks new ground (and Photopia does), can be considered a "non-game" using the old standard. But the details of the "theory" of interactive fiction are neither pertinent nor illustrative to this review. Photopia is at its best when it is viewed alone, without preconceptions.
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Kristopher Purzycki
Photopia
Reading Adam Cadre's Photopia (1998), a work of interactive fiction.
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50 Years of Text Games, by Aaron A. Reed
Nothing felt momentous about Photopia's release. [...] In later years that game would often be called one of the best interactive fictions of all time, kindling one of the form's most significant turns. But for those first six weeks, it was as anonymous as any stick of wood.
[...]
Photopia's success signaled that the soon-to-be-influential parser IF community was beginning to broaden its horizons: not looking exclusively inward or backward but out, toward new and different possible futures. Slowly at first, but with increasing momentum, story would begin to take prominence over puzzles in the games the community celebrated, which in turn would influence larger conversations about what successful interactive narratives could look like.
[...]
Photopia is about a moment that changes everything, so it feels somehow fitting that its legacy would be to stand in for such a moment in interactive fiction's history.
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