Photopia

In contrast to many others, I did not go in with very high expectations of Photopia. What I did know was that (a) it's very different; (b) at the time, it changed what people thought text adventure meant; and (c) it's best to play it without knowing much about it. I grew tired of trying to avoid spoilers, and decided to just play it instead of continuing to live in fear.

It was indeed different from most of what I have played before. Each vignette progresses linearly, and rarely am I getting stuck looking for what to do. The parser is forgiving, and in many instances just waiting or walking in any direction will progress the story for you. I liked this approach, even though it does feel less interactive than a full-on simulation.

I don't really get the meaning of the colours and I had trouble keeping track of which character was which, which made the vignettes particularly disjointed. However, after repeatedly instructing the PC to hug and kiss baby Alley in this game, I realised the game was fairly moving. More importantly, I should go and repeatedly hug and kiss my children now while they are young. Bye!