Posted by Paul Eres
Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:53:00 GMT
Photopia by Adam Cadre is probably his most famous interactive fiction. It was released in 1998 for an IF contest (which it won). I don’t play IF games that often because their puzzles can often be maddeningly obscure, but this is an exception, and is one of my favorite games—it’s not a typical IF game.
As much as I hate when others say this, Photopia is a game that it’s best to go into unprepared for, without knowing what to expect. Expectations can affect the experience. But I’ll at least say that it’s short, very well-written, that it involves only a single puzzle, and that it’s linear. If that isn’t your cup of tea, ignore this post. There are a lot of things about it which don’t make sense until the end. The nature of its single puzzle and its ending are the things people tend to remember about it.
Cadre’s other IF are worth checking out too—he personally feels that his best work is Varicella (also found on that same page), because it is a full world and Photopia is more of a short story, but Photopia is probably better for the casual IF user since it’s less difficult to get into.
TIGdb: Entry for Photopia
Posted in Unique / Bizarre, Interactive Fiction, Highly Recommended, Freeware | Tags AdamCadre | 33 comments
Posted by Terry
Fri, 19 Oct 2007 08:00:00 GMT
Veteran game reviewer Kieron Gillen (who’s previously written for PC Gamer, EDGE and Eurogamer, among others) has reposted an old EDGE article to his collaborative games blog, Rock Paper Shotgun. The article is entitled “Word Play”, and it’s about the use of text in videogames.
The first half of the article is compelling enough, I suppose, but it’s the second part that’s really interesting to me. Kieron moves on to discuss “one corner of the modern games scene [where text] is dominant… the Interactive Fiction or IF Community. Or, as they were known in the eighties, text adventures.”
This section includes interviews with IF notables Emily Short and Adam Cadre (the authors of Galatea and Photopia, respectively), and talks about their influences, their approach to game design, and their view of how things are going to pan out for IF in the future.
I remember reading it in EDGE a few years ago, and at the time, I’d only played Photopia and some older well known text adventures like Zork and Colossal Cave. This article is what finally got me to explore Interactive Fiction in more depth, and I’m quite glad I did! There seemed to be something missing from this republished version though, so I dusted off my collection of old copies of EDGE and had a look for the original article (it’s November 2004, E142). Huzzah! The original had a little separate boxed off section titled “A short IF reading list”, which listed a number of introductory titles that I recommend checking out as soon as you possibly can, if you haven’t already.
I don’t know why this wasn’t included in this version of the article, but it’s well worth reading, so I’ve copied it from the original and reproduced it here. Hit the extended to read it!
Read more...
Posted in Interactive Fiction, Community, Developers, Freeware, Interviews | Tags AdamCadre, EmilyShort | 9 comments
