Gaming Oddities: Facade

Facade is one of those games that's more fun when you don't play it how the developers intended you to.

You play as a friend of a married couple, Trip and Grace, whose marriage, despite appearances, is on the rocks. You must talk them through a difficult conversation, say the right things and help them mend their fences. Depending on your choices, Trip might throw you out of the house, Grace might leave Trip or they can start to patch things up.

The main feature of the game is the ability to type in whatever you want to say. Unlike most games, which either have multiple choice options or a dialogue tree, Trip and Grace will respond to whatever you type, within certain limits.

There is one problem the system has, one that it shares with old text-based games with prompts. Players have practically infinite imagination, and the system only can respond to a finite number of inputs, so Trip and Grace end up at a loss when the player acts in a way the system doesn't know how to deal with. For example, in one playthrough, the player role-plays as a badly injured person, and Trip puts up with it until he throws the person out. Obviously, any normal person would either A)call an ambulance, B)act like it isn't their problem or C)accuse the injured person of pretending to be hurt rather than simply going about their evening, but computer games aren't able to perfectly imitate real people.

Even if you're trying to succeed, the characters may not always respond to what you're saying as you hope they will. Some of the examples might be attributed to the characters being rather emotional for much of the night, but some of it is due to the limitations of the game.

Trip and Grace can sometimes respond to what you say in rather strange ways. For example, Trip understandably doesn't react well to you using profanity when speaking with him(e.g. if you greet him with an obscenity, he will slam the door in your face, giving you an instant Game Over), but if you use the word "melon" in any context, Trip will immediately throw you out of his apartment. Granted, it's obviously because "melons" is a slang term for a woman's breasts, but it's still a rather hilarious overreaction to a seemingly innocuous word.

Unfortunately, the dialogue system is far from your only obstacle in your quest to save Trip and Grace's marriage. Both of them are deeply flawed individuals, which is why their relationship is on the rocks. To put a long story short, each of them is guilty of various things, from lying to adultery, and given the circumstances, one has to wonder why they got married in the first place. As such, it's relatively easy to lose patience with them entirely, and conclude that their marriage is beyond saving.

Luckily, the ability to say anything you can type into the chat prompt can lead to some entertaining scenarios, from roleplaying to saying the most outlandish and/or offensive things and seeing how Grace and Trip react. You can even play various games, such as trying to evade Trip when he throws you out of the apartment.

In conclusion, Facade is one of games that is enjoyable for reasons apart from the ones that the creators intended. It's not terribly well-made , and accomplishing the main objective can be frustrating, but it offers a surprising amount of freedom to play around.