Game Review: Facade (PC)

Yes, you really can type that! Facade is probably one of the most revealing games about your own personality and what you instinctively may want to do. You see for this freeware /pay what you want game you are tasked with attending the worst dinner party ever.

Say hello to Grace and Trip, your “friends” that got together ten years ago and for all intent and purpose they’re now sick of each other. Upon arrival the two are bickering and squabbling, picking fault in each other and asking you leading questions to try to get you on their side. This leaves you the virtual piggy in the middle. Do you:

A) Try and get them to resolve their issues?

B) Take one of their sides and gang up on the other?

C) Go absolutely nuts on the pair of them leading them to break up?

D) Type verbal abuse to get yourself disowned at the drop of a hat?

Facade is essentially an interactive soap drama scene where what you type changes the course of the drama unfolding. Through each play through you will cover vaguely similar topics but your answers and general personality will completely shape the outcome. Never wanted to go to Italy? Great – Grace will be primed for flirting with! Start kissing Trip and you’ll have angry faces all round! There are thousands of different speech lines and different maps of how they are triggered. It’s not entirely open-ended as there’s only so many different things the game can fall back on, so expect confused “umm?” remarks if you type something like “I’d like cheese and crackers please”. However its great fun to try out all different questions related to the conversation just to see what happens.

There are some small drawbacks. The graphics have inconsistencies where the characters faces sometimes lose all their features. Also sometimes you’ll reply about something to one character and the other character thinks it’s for them which then changes the story in ways you didn’t want to happen. Aside from that, it’s a remarkable and entertaining distraction that I think anyone who enjoys the story element in gaming should experience at least once.

Positives

~Immediate cause and effect gameplay

~Excellent voice work

~Completely unique

Negatives

~Limited appeal for non story lovers

Conclusion

Facade will reveal to you exactly what type of personality you have with your immediate answers and then let you have great fun switching personality traits to improve or ruin other characters lives. Great fun and ideal for a quick ten minute sidestep into soap opera land.