"Galatea" seems very appealing at first. The session begins with the set-up of Galatea in the art gallery. The prologue is all about Galatea's physical appearance. The narrator talks about senses; how she smells and looks, and even about how she would look at at an event. It is evident here that Galatea is to be the protagonist that I will be interacting with. Galatea balls her hands into a fist, and speaks, which is confusing because I thought that she was a statue, since she is in a spotlight and on a pedestal with a placard. After inputting by pressing any button, I am brought to the initial situation. It is a brief sample of what the prologue was, telling of Galatea being on a platform with a placard in a spotlight.
My player character begins to interact when I command it to examine the surroundings. Currently, Galatea is only able to be seen from behind, i.e. "Back View." Specifically, I input "examine Galatea." The output was a surprisingly long description of Galatea, more in-depth than the prologue's description was. It was basically the narrator speaking about the beauty of the protagonist. Really, nothing is helpful whatsoever, until I get to the part that says "you might try speaking to me." The output that follows this suggests that my player character seems nervous or anxious about something, and there is an apparent "visceral" vibe in the room. This confuses me; this exchange makes me figure that the non-player character is directly inviting me to start asking Galatea about general subjects. Before examining Galatea, I decided to examine the placard. It tells of Galatea's roots; where she came from, how she was made, what she is made of, etc. Because of this, I decide to ask about her placard; maybe there will be some information that will lead me closer to the end.
I input "ask Galatea about placard." This diagetic command causes a reply that infers that she is immobile; so it is affirmed by the interactor that this is indeed a statue in an art gallery, and not an actual living being. I then decide from this cycle that I must interact with her as if she was the center of attention, so I begin inputting random general questions such as "ask Galatea about gallery." Surprisingly, she had nothing to say about this, but she had answers to many of the other various questions I inputted after I asked her about the artist. It seemed as this was an important topic to the protagonist. She begins to get uncomfortable and speaks much less, so I began asking more questions about how she came to be such as "ask Galatea about art," which brought me to "ask Galatea about airport" (she mentions murals that she saw in the airport when talking about art). 
When the protagonist mentions Cyprus, I command my player character to ask about her home, which I assume that it is since she came to the art gallery from an airport in Cyprus. The output again is just a description of where she has been. I begin to wonder where this interactive fiction is going. There seems to be no real flow to the story, just asking random questions and having seemingly unconnected exchanges. Each cycle is just an explanation of her life. I should have tried, at this point to interact with her by telling her about my player character, but that never occurred to me during the session. I figure that maybe Galatea wants to get philosophical, so I begin asking her questions such as "ask Galatea about life," "ask Galatea about death," "ask Galatea about philosophy." The latter did not yield a viable output but the first two commands caused the protagonist to ponder about it for a while, before declaring that she genuinely has no idea, being that she has lived in an art gallery her entire life and is essentially, a statue. At the end of the exchange, it seems that the narrator is suggesting to stop asking her such questions - it says "you brush away the thought of people you could be talking to." However, this can also be an implication of how important continuing the interaction with Galatea is.
My worst mistake was to input "ask Galatea about love." I could not even capture with the screen shot because the output was so long and detailed; filled with emotion, especially anger and sadness. It seems to me that this entire session is about the protagonist's creator and her feelings towards him. This was evidently the final reply. I had exhausted the protagonist by bugging her about questions about life, death, love, and her past, apparently. I was disappointed, but I understood the importance of Galatea's creator to her and it made sense that this would be the final situation. Although unhappy it was over moderately quickly, I was content that it was an final situation that would make sense to end abruptly at. After reading the entirety of her love confession for her artist, I command the directive "quit."
Galatea was not much of a puzzle to me. I never needed to use extradiagetic commands (other than the ending), or directives, such as to give me hints or something of the like. There were really absolutely no mini-games; nothing to figure out in comparison to say, "All Roads." It is certainly not lacking in its literary content. This is one element of this interactive fiction that stands out. The narration, the protagonist's replies, amongst the other content is simply amazing in that it described very well the situation that is going on. Also, the output it almost always helpful to lead you to the next question. Although I didn't mean to, following these slight hints throughout each reply lead me to my ultimate demise. I really do wish that this interactive fiction was a bit more like a game, because honestly I was quite bored of it after asking hundreds and hundreds of questions and swearing at her multiple times in a row (explains the lack of screenshots). It was interesting to read about a statue's history, and to figure out that it was a statue in of itself, I suppose. But as the interactor, I wanted to do more than just input "ask Galatea about..." every opportunity, and this seemed like the only way to be able to move through the games. Now that I think about it, I'm sure there would be many interesting replies to actions I could do, other than asking. I just figured that that was the entire point of the game; to ask Galatea about herself. I didn't think to "hug Galatea," "kiss Galatea," "kick Galatea," and actions of the like. However, I believe that inputting these actions would make Galatea a more fun-filled interactive fiction.
I cannot call it a game in any way really, because I did not feel at all through the transversal that it was challenging. I didn't even feel as if this interactive fiction would have any sort of mini-game or puzzle such as in other interactive fictions we have perused, the entire time I was playing. In conclusion, although the literary content was impeccable and interesting, I was extremely disappointed in the lack of actual interaction that I could have with Galatea, other than just asking her simple questions. I had a very uneventful time with Galatea.
Montfort, Nick. Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. London: The Mit Press, 2005. Print.
I did not enjoy having to cite the poem; I feel as if it takes away from the creativity aspect, and the wholeness of the electronic poem. However, it was neccessary, and I really wanted to do this poem.
I, at first, had a hard time trying to put in one of my own pictures as the background to the second line of the poem, but I just fiddled around and eventually found out how to send the picture to the background so that the words would show up. I animated "wander" to move right, and I animated "LOST" to grow, shrink, and move left off the screen, as if it were wandering away to get lost somewhere.
I used a canvas background, attempting to portray that Tolkien was talking about being old. I used the checkerboard effect on all the words not significant to the poem (in my mind). I made "STRONG" at 8 point font, making it grow 400% with the grow animation. I then animated "wither" to flicker, and turn into the color of the canvas as if to wither away. I must say I lost sight of my intentions at this point, because the animation became a routine - I would just animate the important words and use entrance animation on the unimportant words.
I loved that I had already taken a picture that corresponds to this part of the poem. However, I also realized at this point that I am simply following the words' meanings in the poem, and not conveying the actual meaning of the poem. I tried to fix this after this line. I used the diamond animation for the first three, and on "FROST," I used the Chiller font and made it grow into a lighter shade of blue, as is the color of frost. I also wished at this point that I was able to do more with pictures, and more with animation; however, I am not skilled enough (yet).
I used the fade technique for "from the ashes a...shall be." I animated "FIRE" to turn 360 degrees, then made it so that it turned blood red. The last words to this slide are "shall be woken," and on "woken" I used the faded zoom, as well as the flicker. I found many limitations in that I was not able to use copyrighted material, and I did not want to use all of Powerpoint's designs, so I had to choose applicable pictures of my own. I believe that if I were able to use copyrighted material without having to cite it, this would be a much more interesting poem. The fact that we had to use that made me a little less excited about the possibilities of this poem.
Again, I feel like I am just animating the words and not giving more meaning to the poem. It seems as though I'm just trying to engage the reader with the interactive properties of some of the words. I left all the words that weren't positive in the darker side of my picture, and used the fly-in effect for the words that were not "emphasized," as Powerpoint calls that specific animation. As for "LIGHT," I put it right above the lamp, and made it enlarge from a normal size into a bright yellow. I also made "shadows" darken, and "spring" bounce. I feel like there is not much else that I can do here but animate simply. 
