Photopia

Drama IF Comp 1998 1st of 27 XYZZY Awards 1998 Best Writing and Best Story

XYZZY Awards 1998 Finalist - Best Game, Best NPCs, Best Individual Puzzle, Best Individual NPC, Best Use of Medium

Photopia a.k.a. Fotopia
Author(s)	Adam Cadre
Publisher(s)	n/a
Release date(s)	Oct-1998
Authoring system	Inform
Platform(s)	Z-code, Glulx
Language(s)	English, Spanish
License(s)	Freeware
Multimedia
Color effects	optional
Graphics	none
Sound/Music	none
Ratings
Cruelty scale	Merciful

How It Begins

(The game asks if you would like color and instructions. Someone suggests: "Let's tell a story together.")

You are some dude regaining consciousness after a day on the slopes and too much alcohol. It's after midnight. You're in your car and carrying nothing. Your buddy Rob is driving, speeding down Montgomery Boulevard. Perhaps you want Rob to stop or slow down or find out more about those chicks you two hooked up with. But before you can do anything, you see a red light.

Now you're Wendy Mackaye, first girl on the red planet. You are at the landing site in your spacesuit. An orbiter blew up, scattering pieces of itself and stuff for a new colony all over the landscape. Your mission is to find any piece of that equipment that's still functioning.

Notable Features

• There are multiple PCs. The story is told out of order through multiple viewpoints.
• The game is highly linear; it also has many puzzleless sections and relatively easy puzzles in others, encouraging rapid advancement of the plot. It has been the focus of much discussion on linearity and difficulty within IF.
• Some of the game is a story-within-a-story.
• Each section is color-coded. The choice of colors is not arbitrary; each color fits its section in some way.
• The game uses conversation menus when talking to the NPCs.

Versions

Competition Release (color)

• Photopia (Adam Cadre as "Opal O'Donnell"; 1998; Z-code). IF Comp 1998: 1st place.
  • IFID: ZCODE-1-980913-2583
    IFID links: IFDB
  • Note 1: For a while, Adam Cadre claimed that "Opal O'Donnell" had assisted him by entering his game into the comp under her name and e-mail address. Supposedly, Adam had previously talked to Opal about borrowing a game element from her ChickenComp game (which she agreed to), and by letting him enter the competition under her name as a pseudonym, he was able to avoid comparisons with his earlier game I-0. But, more recently, Adam revealed that there never was an Opal O'Donnell: it was just a pseudonym. See the Photopia Phaq for full details.
  • Note 2: Winner of Best Writing and Best Story, XYZZY Awards 1998. Also, finalist for Best Individual NPC, Best Individual Puzzle, Best NPCs, Best Game, and Best Use of Medium.

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Competition Release (black and white)

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Z-code version 1.22

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MS-DOS version 1.22

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PalmOS version 1.22

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Spanish translation version 1.23.1E

• Fotopia (translator: José Luis Díaz as "Zak McKraken"; 14-Dec-1999; Z-code). Spanish.
  • IFID: ZCODE-1-991220-0079
    IFID links: IFDB
  • File: fotopia.z5 (209.00 KB).

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Glulx version 2.01

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Russian translation

• Фотопия (translator: Всеволод Зубарев; 2-Dec-2013; Z-code 8; Russian).
  • Download.
  • Play online.

Links

General info

• Photopia at Adam Cadre's site.
• Photopia (archived) - at Baf's Guide.
• Photopia - at IFDB.
• Photopia - at ifwizz interactive fiction (in German).
• Photopia (portal) - 1998's work at 50 Years of Text Games.
• Photopia at TV Tropes Wiki.
• Photopia at Wikipedia.
• Photopia - at Home of the Underdogs.

Reviews

• Photopia - at SPAG.
• Photopia - at IF Ratings.
• Review by Jordan Magnuson.
• Review by Paul O'Brian.
• Review by Jenni Polodna.
• Review by Dan Shiovitz.
• Review by Duncan Stevens.
• Review (archive) at Play This Thing! - by Therum.

Spoilers

• SPAG Specifics analysis in SPAG #53 by Victor Gijsbers (major spoilers) (November 2008).
• ClubFloyd transcript.