"Galatea has what I call a multilinear plot: unlike traditional IF, it has no single path to victory. Instead there are a large number of endings, some more satisfactory than others, of which many could be considered "win" states. It takes only a few minutes of play to arrive at an ending, but considerably longer to find all of them.

The game also takes an ambitious approach to NPC (non-player character) conversation, both in terms of volume (Galatea has many hundreds of things to say) and complexity (she keeps track of the state of conversation and reacts differently according to what has already been said and done.)"

I can think of no superlatives, no praise for the game to truly reflect what it deserves: a permanent place on everyone's hard disk. Suffice to say that this is the best non-player character I've ever seen, and Galatea's dozens (yes, dozens) of possible endings will amaze you to no end. If you're an IF fan, this is simply a must-have. If you are not, chances are you'll never like the genre if you don't enjoy Galatea. Interactive fiction -- let alone multilinear stories -- doesn't get better than this, folks.