Two commands, "think about" and "recap", are provided to keep track of what has already been said; the former is also used to advance the storyline, as the player character draws conclusions about the story as it has unfolded to that point.

In the myth, he falls in love with the statue, named Galatea or Elise in different versions, and the goddess Venus brings her to life.

The plot is thus designed to appear open-ended with the development of the story entirely dependent on what the player decides to talk or ask about or what actions they choose to perform.

[5] In interviews, Emily Short has explained that Galatea arose out of her efforts to develop advanced dialog coding for interactive fiction engines.

[6] Development of the game progressed organically with Short engaging in test runs and drafting new dialog options for every conversational dead-end that arose.

"[7] Short has acknowledged the helpful influence of the close-knit IF community and the "atmosphere in which experimentation is valued" as leading to the success of her works like Galatea.

[13] Fellow award-winning IF author, Adam Cadre has called Galatea "the best NPC ever"[14]—a view that was echoed by Joystiq's John Bardinelli.

"[16] In a 2009 article, Rock, Paper, Shotgun praised the depth and detail of the game, the complexities of the character design and its "masterful balance between intricacy and simplicity", and "Galatea's emotional turmoil" that is "encoded sweetly into the subtext of what's going on.