Review Facade Developer: Procedural Arts Publisher: N/A Genre: Interactive Story Release Date: 2005 Platform: Review by Alexander Tait September 23, 2005		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

Many readers will remember Starship Titanic and how it was a game that claimed to have perfected a text parser that would allow completely flexible, sentence-based interaction with characters. Those of us who played this game found that, although it was a complex and unique game, the parser left a lot to be desired. I must say that I expected much the same when I started playing Facade.

But I was wrong...

This game is infinitely more complex than Starship Titanic, for one. It includes code that analyzes responses from the player and “thinks” about the most appropriate replies it generates. These replies include changing facial expressions of Trip and Grace. The player is readily drawn into the, dare I say it, facade that they are interacting with real people instead of being driven by choices that the game developers have predetermined. The complexity of the engine including subroutines and algorithms that monitor the player's input is discussed in greater detail on the technology link at the InteractiveStory website.

Facade is the brainchild of two developers, Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern, who created the game over a five-year period, drawn together by a fascination with artificially intelligent art and entertainment. What is even more impressive about this free 781MB (!) game is that this concept was almost totally self-funded while working in tertiary education. There is more detail about their backgrounds and research on the website.

The game installs to the hard drive and does not require the CD-ROM be in the drive after installation. Note it must be installed to the C: drive. There is talk on the website of developing a patch at some stage to overcome this, so for those of you not wanting to use the C: drive, there is the possibility of being able to play this game in future.

Not a true adventure game, Facade is an “interactive drama”, wherein players interact with characters, which in turn influences the storyline and eventual outcome. The player selects one of about a dozen or so character names. You may be lucky and your name might be there! There is opportunity to play either female or male, which has an impact on the interactions with Grace and Trip. Players do this through a highly developed text parser. The player constructs short, grammatical sentences which the two protagonists react and reply to.

In Facade, the player takes the role of a good friend of Grace and Trip, a thirty something couple, who are to those around them, happy and successful. You are invited to their home, only to find that Trip and Grace's relationship is teetering very precariously on the rocks. The player is caught in the middle and must decide how to advise the couple, who to side with, and to what degree they want to become involved. No one's experience will be exactly identical and few will be untouched by the real life drama that unfolds at the player's fingertips. Most will want to take another ride on the “what if” train.

The game is short, especially if you antagonize the characters, and hence is described as being one-act only. There is a lot of replay potential, both in the possibility of playing a female or a male friend to the couple in the story, as well as the different opportunities to interact differently that lead to completely different outcomes.

Contrary to most games, sound effects are sparse but voice acting is uniformly excellent. The two actors who play Trip and Grace are professional voice actors and it shows... When the actors speak, they are Trip and Grace-one could be forgiven for feeling embarrassed for being party to such intimate aspects of their life.

When one of the endings is reached, a “stageplay” is saved (located in c:\Facade\stageplays), which is a log of interactions between the player and Trip and Grace. My experience was that most of my stageplays ended with me being kicked out of the apartment but perhaps this is just my typical abrasiveness with people shining through! You can read back through stageplays and perhaps identify turning points in the story with the possibility of changing events next time.

Facade can be downloaded freely from the InteractiveStory website. Alternatively, a 2-CD version can be purchased from the site for $14+shipping, the cost of pressing and shipping them. Also available, is “Behind the Facade”, a detailed guide that outlines the possibilities and outcomes and how to achieve them, which costs $5+shipping. It also includes details about how Facade works. Those who have an interest in the backgrounds of the developers that led to the game can download their research papers too! The game is free to share with others including posting it on local area networks for access by others. For the gamer who has everything, there is a deluxe version of the game that includes a limited-edition autographed copy of Facade, a Facade T-shirt, hat, mousepad, soundtrack, poster and they will record any name desired additional to the list of available player names for $100.

Although I experienced no real bugs in Facade, there were a number of issues that lessened my enjoyment of it. On beginning the game, you must have your desktop set to 1024x768 as it doesn't resize automatically. Playing it in lower resolution means much of the screen is not accessible. Despite this, setting the desktop to 1024x768, I still couldn't access some of the lower settings on the screen such as instructions and help. It was quite bizarre. The game requires Windows ME/2000/XP and will not even install if one of these OS's is not present. Thirdly, the game offers no saving options so it must be played in one sitting. This is not usually a bad things as the game is compact and may even lose its momentum if broken up. The authors have an email to contact them if you have problems with the game: help@interactivestory.net.

One final note; although there is no Mac version of the game, the authors are interested in creating a port. They are interested in hearing from any Mac programmers up to the task... They also welcome feedback about the game with the plan that there will be future games of Facade's ilk. Contact them at feedback@interactivestory.net.

Facade is not going to threaten the Gabriel Knight series or The Longest Journey as the best adventure game ever but it is excellent value and every adventure gamer ought to give it a try. I would especially suggest that game developers play it just ti see what the future of character interaction could be. Just like a quality movie or book, Facade is not necessarily the most enjoyable game to play but it sparks the imagination of what quality games could be.

This game deserves an A for design and for breaking new ground and a B for overall enjoyment and fun.

Final Grade: B
(find out more about our grading system)

System Requirements:

• Windows ME/2000/XP
• 1.6GHz processor
• 256MB RAM
• 1.0GB hard drive space