Photopia

Drama

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.
  • Note 1: Opal assisted Adam by entering his game into the comp under her name and e-mail address. Adam had previously talked to Opal about borrowing a game element from her ChickenComp game (which she agreed to). By letting him use her name as a pseudonym for the competition, he was able to avoid comparisons with his earlier game I-0. 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.

Spanish translation version 1.23.1E

• Fotopia (translator: José Luis Diaz as "Zak McKraken"; 14-Dec-1999; Z-code). Spanish.
  • File: fotopia.z5 (209.00 KB).

Links

• Photopia at Baf's Guide to the IF archive.
• Photopia at Adam Cadre's site.
• Photopia at Wikipedia.