Photopia

It's a captivating story that unfolds in a way that makes more sense as you go, leading you to understand the characters and their relationships to each other. I went into my first playthrough completely blind, so my understanding was absolutely zero when I started and the first few sections made no sense whatsoever, but this didn't at all take away from my experience. It made it more rewarding when I began putting pieces together.

The game's only weak point is that it is more of a story than a game, and interactivity mostly comes down to different choices of dialogue. I understand that this was a choice on the creator's part, and I definitely still recommend giving it a play-through, but it's best to be aware going in that you're going to get a non-traditional, non-linear story rather than an interactive adventure with puzzles.

I don't know that there's much I can add to the numerous reviews, but I played this for the first time recently and I wanted to register the incredibly moving experience that this game delivered for me. I'm still fairly new to IF, though I've had thought-provoking experiences with several works that have quickly demonstrated the artistic potential of the form to me. Photopia, though, is the first IF work that I've encountered that has moved me at a deep, soul-searching level. From start to finish, Photopia is a fine crafted, emotionally-wrenching experience.

I went into the game with only the barest information about it -- that it has been considered incredibly influential and that it experiments with the interactive fiction form. As much as probably any IF work, this one really benefits from going in with as few (or none!) spoilers as possible. I won't delve into any of the specifics, but I will discuss one especially affecting scene behind the spoiler tags below.

(Spoiler - click to show)The scene that especially got me was early-ish in the work, when you play as a father whose task is to go outside and retrieve his daughter (who we learn is Alley, the focus of the work overall) for bedtime. You can choose a number of options, either telling her to come inside right off the bat, or prolonging the conversation, discussing some of the finer details of astrophysics. As a father of a young daughter myself, this scene absolutely devastated me. By this point, the astute player can start to see that something ominous is heading for Alley, and so this time is all the more precious for the father. I wanted to keep the conversation going indefinitely, though the astute player also can see that there's really only one outcome for this scene -- bedtime will have to come at some point. By the end of this scene, I was not only in tears, but knew that I was in the midst of a truly special work of IF.

If you haven't played this game, stop reading these reviews and play it! Like a tightly written short story, you can engage with Photopia in a brief span of time, though it will stick with you long, long after.

I appreciated Photopia above all as a short story. Alley's life is told through the medium of brief sections of text, presented out of chronological order, and not from her own perspective, but from the perspective of different people in her life. As in some of the short stories of Alice Munro, the reader takes these different fragments of time and pieces them together.

The framed sections, in coloured text, are outside of this world altogether: strange, imaginary landscapes. How do they relate to the main story? The reader has to figure it out. And the final scene reveals - to us, but not the main character - the ultimate source of these stories.

I found myself wanting more from the framed stories: there was enough description of the various fantasy landscapes to get me interested, but if they had been described in more detail, and allowed more "examine" responses, I would have been more interested in these parts. They may have benefited from some more complex puzzles. When I did get stuck, such as in the crystal maze, it wasn't the 'good stuck' feeling that comes from untangling something brainteasing.

The final revelation was an excellent twist. It made me wish the whole game was somewhat longer and more fully realised: we should be feeling that Alley is haunted by this buried memory, that it has been a part of her for her whole life and yet she doesn't know what it is.

I don't find myself as moved by Photopia as many other people do, even though it is obviously about a tragic event: I'd like the air of mystery and wonder to be greater, and for Alley's inner feelings to be explored in more depth (if that is possible, considering that it goes for the clever device of describing her through other people's eyes). But I can at least see the potential for a moving story in it.

I first played Photopia about 15 years ago and cried at the ending. It took me a while to figure out how the different vignettes fit together and it hit me hard. I had never experienced such emotion playing a silly text adventure. I will always love that about Photopia.

I played the game last night over Zoom with my sister and her two adult sons, introducing them to their first IF experience. They quickly found the boundaries of the interpreter and explored. (What happens if I go north forever? Can I "x up"? How come I can't use this verb which is in the sentence above?) In the end they enjoyed it describing it as a choose-your-own-adventure book or the tabletop role-playing game Expedition.

There are so many clever bits I saw the second time through, how the game feels huge and open and yet is really just railroading through the story. They found rooms I hadn't found in my first playthrough which was a delight. They figured out to just hit "z" when it was clear their actions had no affect (rather than trying to speak to the NPCs). There was one moment when they accidentally hit something and started the next "chapter" before finishing reading the end of the previous vignette. There's no way to go back or scroll up to see what they missed. (We were playing the web version at iplayif.com.)

They want to play another game together sometime over Zoom. (Not the Z-code interpreter.) Thank you, Adam Cadre, for bringing us long-distance joy!

I've played this game and I expected more of it. Its an totally directed game, you can read coloured text and nothing more.

Regards.