in which i spoil big parts of a short game to talk about how weird influential titles are.
When I played it, Photopia made me go "oh, WOW" to such a degree that I actually bothered to write Adam Cadre an email thanking him for making the game. As far as I can remember, the only other time I ever felt compelled to write an email was after I finished Undertale.
I guess it's not a title that has held up so well over time, and thinking about it yeah I guess that makes sense. It's interesting seeing what titles have held up and what haven't.
Back in the day, my entire understanding of Interactive Fiction games consisted of what was listed on Home of the Underdogs. I feel like HOTU's list was generally good, but if you look back through it you'll occasionally see some recommendations on there that make you go "What???"
Like Facade of all things is unironically listed as an Editor's Choice game??? You know, that weird married couple game that people love to dunk on and shitpost about?
A sign of how perspectives change over time, I guess. Or at least how you can really open your eyes when you've got more than one website's curation to go off of. I'm curious on if Underdog's view was really the consensus back in the day, or if they were always an outlier.
