[ReactiveJelly]

I'm trying it and it's _really_ hard to get any commands to work.

Maybe I thought it would be more like Facade. Stuff like "Ask galatea her favorite color" and "tell galatea her dress is pretty" aren't working. It's moving really slow (minutes between attempts) as I try to guess what keywords I can use.

I can't even "examine room" like I usually do for conversation. "You can't see any such thing".

[chipotle_coyote]

Did you try typing "help", which gives you the following rather verbose block of text:

----

This is an exercise in NPC interactivity. There's no puzzle and no set solution, but a number of options with a number of different outcomes.

HINTS: Ask or tell her about things that you can see, that she mentions, or that you think of yourself. Interact with her physically. Pause to see if she does anything herself. Repeat actions. The order in which you do things is critical: the character's mood and the prior state of the conversation will determine how she reacts.

VERBS: Many standard verbs have been disabled. All the sensory ones (LOOK, LISTEN, SMELL, TOUCH, TASTE) remain, as do the NPC interaction verbs ASK, TELL, HELLO, GOODBYE, and SORRY; KISS, HUG, and ATTACK. You may also find useful THINK and its companion THINK ABOUT, which will remind you of the state of conversation on a given topic. The verb RECAP gives a summary list of topics that you've discussed so far; if she's told you that she's said all she knows on that topic, it appears in italics.

SHORTCUT: 'Ask her about' and 'tell her about' may be abbreviated to A and T. So >A CHEESE is the same as >ASK GALATEA ABOUT CHEESE.

There is an assortment of walkthroughs available at http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/cheats.htm, but I suggest not looking at them until you have already experimented somewhat.

[stuaxo]

Can I use "Say" if I'm in the same room ?

For some reason I assumed she would know I was talking to her, but she then said "you might try talking to me".

[ianbicking]

I also had a hard time moving it forward. Mostly asking about single words picked from the text worked best, but as a result it feels a bit like choose your own adventure but with hidden choices. And I'd try to ask about things that seemed important and get "You can't form your question into words" only to try with different words later and finally get some information. (But I always have this problem with IF... maybe I'm not patient enough, or have to learn the typical IF vocabulary, or maybe I just word things in funny ways, I don't know.)

[Rd6n6]

I think most of the commands are of the form “talk about x” “tell about x” and “ask about x.” There are also “Galatea, come here” type commands. It definitely takes some some experimentation to figure the parser out unfortunately