The Purple Level

Well I just finished Photopia, and it was a lot less confusing than the other text games so far, as has been mentioned. The only part where I was stuck for a bit was the crystal maze. For anyone stuck there, it's not a non-euclidean space sort of problem, you just have to think outside the box a bit. It seemed to me like Photopia was more straightforward because there wasn't as much to figure out (or maybe I'm just getting used to adventure-game-logic). As the description on the website says, Photopia is more story than game, and it is difficult to get lost or change the intended flow of events in any way. Because of this, I found the Purple "level" much more significant than I perhaps would have if something like it was in Zork or Adventure.

Despite all the nested narratives, varying perspectives, and the illusion of control, the majority of the game feels like you aren't really in control, and that you are just being led through a slightly more interactive literary narrative, which makes it that much more jarring and compelling when you lose what control you do have. During the Purple dream, the screen still shows a user besides you interacting with the text prompt like you have been the whole time, and you have no control over the commands entered. As Alley tells the current "you" (Wendy) about her dream, the interaction fully becomes non-interactive, and I found it made me pore over every word and image even more. By this point in the story, the player probably has a good idea of what is going on and what is going to happen to Alley, and I found myself searching for some sort of meaning or validation in the imagery of the dream. I have my ideas as to what it meant, but I think it was left open to interpretation on purpose. I felt this was the climax of Photopia, as our interaction with the game moves from entering commands to fully examining the imagery of the dreams and deciding what to make of them.