Cycling around it all with Galatea.

SPOILER ALERT: A few of the many possible endings of this piece are discussed/ depicted.

Galatea, by Emily short is a piece of interactive fiction based upon the classic Greek myth of the same name. Except unlike ending in Galatea and Pygmalion’s marriage, he fears her after her awakening and sends her away. Now she is a traveling exhibit and the interactor is simply a museum visitor, interacting with the exhibit. The prologue is simple, it describes the exhibit and as you are about to turn away she says “They told me you were coming”, though it is unclear what she meant by ‘you’.(Fig 1)


It seems that the player in Galatea is an art critic who is attending and exhibit of works with artificial intelligence. But the nature of Galatea herself is unknown to you, she speaks of being carved, and how she was awakened by the gods but are her memories real or is she simply infused with artificial intelligence? This question on what Galatea is seems to be complicated by the player’s extradiagetic knowledge that they are dealing with a piece of interactive fiction, programmed. But to be playing an IF where you are interacting with an animate statue that may or may not be actually robotic.

Unlike most interactive fiction, the plot of Galatea is advanced primarily through discussion with the character. If you try asking her about herself she will simply refer to the placard below her, but there is a wide variety of possible input, you can ask her about particular words and ideas found in her previous responses, tell her about things, look, listen, touch, kiss, hug, and attack. Interaction with Galatea can be seen in Fig 2. Pausing is also useful in the game since she often has more to say about certain subjects than she initially lets on. The player can also think and think about certain things in order to recap or forward the story line. Though this may seem limited, especially compared to other, more action-based IFs, it is the level of beauty and detail in the prose, the non-linear nature, and the number of possibilities that make this piece worthwhile.


In the help section, it says that the order the player does things is very important because Galatea shifts moods and personalities based on the prior aspects of the conversation. Her personality is brought out through what the player chooses to do and can be any number of things. There are a number of possible endings, some seeming better than others, in many sessions it seems the player will simply walk away from the exhibit, disappointed in how little they have learned or excited about the buffet in the other room. But dependant on the interactor there is a wide variety of possible endings, from kissing Galatea, becoming her confidant, telling her to leave and replacing her on the pedestal (Fig 3), calling upon Kypris or Dionysus or if you push your luck too much, Galatea may break your arm or even kill you.(Fig 4)



Galatea is neither a story or a puzzle, or perhaps one could argue that it is both of them because of it’s interesting character developments and multiple endings. It is mostly a character study and a study in different means of interaction. I found the character of Galatea interesting in that in conversation she is mostly a reflection of her artist, Pygmalion, and that most things you can learn from interacting comes through asking about him. Galatea is an extremely well-programmed non-player character and the possibilities for interacting with her deserves multiple replays. She takes the puzzle and story elements out of interactive fictions and seems to put them back into human interaction.

To download or learn more about Galatea, please visit the author's website: http://emshort.wordpress.com/my-work/