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 1024×768 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 1024×768, 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: [email protected].

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 [email protected].

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