Galatea is a piece of art work by Emily Short rendered in the form of interactive fiction, and written in Inform. Winner of the Best of Show Award at the 2000 Interactive Fiction Art Show , it alters the typical interactive fiction game mechanics by concentrating instead on the player's interactions with a single NPC, the eponymous Galatea. Much of the interest of the piece derives from the ambiguous nature of the player-NPC dialogue, with the form of the conversation, and indeed the nature of Galatea herself, which shifts depending on the focus the player places on certain aspects of the character's personality. Numerous endings are possible.
Galatea is widely acknowledged as the best-implemented non-player character in interactive fiction. No mean feat, given the dialogue is carried out entirely in terms of ASK HER ABOUT and TELL HER ABOUT topic lines.
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