Facade

If you've been a gamer for a long time, you remember text-input games for the DOS or Mac. These games were adventure games where you literally would type in such things as "Look at ____" or "Open _____". Then, a (somewhat) complex text parser would find what you typed, and change the story accordingly, like "You moved to _____" or "You opened _____, ____ is inside". These games were sometimes too complex for your typical gamer, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a gamer now with the patience to put up with such bulls*** like "You moved to ____. You fell down a hole. You died. New game?".

Anyway, a small development team called Procedural Arts has been working on a technology called ABL: A Behavior Language. Essentially, this and a few other things (Like the JESS engine http://herzberg.ca.sandia.gov/jess/) has the ability to do a very advanced version of these old text games. In Facade, you still type in commands. But, as opposed to more text coming up in a preplanned fashion (Or it going "I do not understand"), the whole story is dynamic to what you say. Cool, eh?



Plus, on top of that, the engine allows you to move around, pick up items, etc, so the game becomes more than that, a surreal dive into AI. I'll admit, this game scares me how well it reacts to different situations. Sure, I can read that me saying a 4chan quote like "NO U" to them is going to come back with a "I don't understand", but the different responses work so well that they react like real people, with comments like "Arent you the joker?".

To start this game (I call it a game, but this is really somewhat of a tech demo. The purpose of the demo is to help the couple out of their mairrage problems, so I consider it somewhat of a realistic game), you pick out a name out of many pre-recorded names. Apparently, for a donation of $100, you can get a bunch of freebies including your name recorded into the game, but.... no. Anyway, just to harass a friend of mine, I picked the name "Paul".

So, the game starts you out basically at a mini-party with you, Trip (The husband), and Grace (The wife). Long story short, they're having marriage problems, and you basically have to help them out. Various paths can be taken in the discussions (It somewhat feels like a very complex Dating Simulation), but I always felt like I was a little lost. It's great that it parses what you say, but I never felt rock-solid sure they understood what I asked or what I said, and sometimes comments like "Not bad" got translated into "Bad", as opposed into "The opposite of bad is good".



The game is outstanding graphically, and then horrible graphically. Face-value, the graphics are s*** that looks like it was made on Macromedia Flash. However, the more you pay attention, the more you notice it was designed with almost a cartoony feel, and designed in order to allow all the characters to give accurate facial expressions (Sounds like the BS Myamoto gave about Wind Waker, right?). In any case, the characters DO react realistically, though sometimes you get to see their "Confused Face" more often than not. Also, as a note, you somewhat have to ignore how they move: Apparently the movement path system code hasnt been really working right, because the characters sometimes just walk through walls for fun and games.

Another fun aspect of the game is how it monitors your movement and the like. For example, if I were to go pick up a statue off their shelving, they would talk about it like I was looking at it, a very interesting factor. Also, if I were to go pick up an empty wine glass, they'd get me a drink etc etc- then again, you can also piss them off by running around like an idiot.

Of course, the real fun in this game is screwing with the engine. Going up to Trip, telling him he's wrong, then kissing his wife and watching the resulting actions is hilarious. Even funnier is to take all of their small belongings (Little models, drinks, wine, the phone, etc) and move it all to the couch as Trip and Grace go "Uhhh.... oookay?". Then, even funnier, is I must have made a record for the fastest game: I got kicked out after saying one word the second I stepped in: "PENIS". Immediately, Trip showed me to the door. Freaking awesome. Then again, not so freaking awesome, because to replay the game you have to restart the entire client, which takes up to 60 seconds to do something (I'd assume building the reaction ladder or some stuff like that, like The Sims).



Overall, Facade is a great game to kill time. You have to download it using the BitTorrent client (Or order two CDs for cash) at http://interactivestory.net/. Its 800 megs, so definately not for the 56k crowd, but a great thing to mess around with. Also, if you REALLY like this for some reason, you can get T-shirts, hats, and other miscellany, which I would assume the cash goes toward this game, which is a pretty good cause. I don't mind buying T-shirts and stuff as long as I know a portion of the cash goes to some cause (Did I mention if you buy a Gametrash T-shirt $1 goes to our server fund?). My favorite has to be their hat, which has a picture of Trip and on it says "JESUS TRIP" (One of the common lines of Grace). Overall, it's free and interesting, go get it if you have the time.

4 star(s) out of 5

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