Façade

It was an early attempt at making a real time interactive fiction, but it ends up being an unintentional comedy.

You play as a on old friend that gets invited into a couple's home whose marriage has clearly detiorated. Supposedly the game will respond to everything you say, and you can supposedly fix the relationship. You also have the option to kiss and hug them. Unfortunatly, it doesnt work. The couple wont respond to most of your inputs, except yes or no. And to many wrong inputs will get them to throw you into the street. So much for a long friendship.

The story does have some branching moments, so you can explore a bit more whats going on in each side, but its not really worth it. Both of the two are pretty annoying and arrogant people, and quite annoying. Its more fun to try swearing in the game and see their reaction than comply and say "yes" all the way to the end.

It utterly failed what it set out to be, but its still entertaining in its own twisted way.

Around the early to mid 2010's this "game" was briefly popular due to the strange responses some people get, mostly involving getting kicked out due to offending them, strangely with the word "Melon" which in certain contexts can be a slang term for a woman's breasts before slowly fading away to obscurity once again only occasionally reappearing in some lets plays or the sometimes yearly Vinesause Joel corruption streams.

But one thing people should know is Façade is not a game at all, calling it a game just doesn't make sense. Façade is a research experiment in fully interactive experiences, in this case a drama involving a get together with a couple in New York City who have a rocky marriage that the player can either try to repair, destroy or even keep the Façade of a perfect, well off married couple that they try to put on in the beginning of the game. This game is mainly driven by an Artificial Intelligence which will run through scenarios and pre-recorded voice lines which can progress in different ways based on the players input, at lest that's the best way i can try to explain this simply, I'd imagine someone else has explained it better, there lies the biggest flaw. According to the games audio file count, Trip and Grace combined have over 9,129 lines recorded which isn't all too bad for a freeware interactive experiment but you can only pull so much from the script and the characters can only say so much to what the player says so you'll get things like early in the game Trip or Grace trying to get you to talk about Italy and Drinks or The Decorating even when you say "no thanks" or really strange responses to what you say, try telling them that they should get a pet or what Vinesause Joel did "i totally get what you're saying" if you want to try an example for yourself, The reason they act this way is because that's what's in the script and the thousands of lines. There isn't much else especially early in the game to do but try to progress the story and see the drama unfold, get all the endings and what not or mess around to the best of your abilities, the latter of which seems to be where most of the modern replay value comes from.

So why am i giving THIS a very high score? Because if you take it for what it is: an experiment in A.I. driven interactive dramas where the characters respond to whatever you type in. Façade does what it sets out to do and thus might be one of the most innovative and interesting interactive experiences of the 2000's. And i can forgive a lot of the flaws not just because A.I. has certainly come a long way from this 16 year old freeware application but the fact that most of Façade was made by 2 people [Micheal Mateas and Andrew Stern] and in total [including actors and composers] just about 13 other people chipping in additional resources for the game. This was never made to go up against big releases of 2005 this was just a research project and honestly the fact that we still talk about Façade 16 years after it was first released goes to show how interesting this experience truly is, i truly suggest if you have a PC and want to try this game out that you go ahead and do so even if its just to say melon and get kicked out the door.

One of those games you play as a joke once in a while. Fun for maybe 5 minutes, then you'll close it for the next few months forgetting it exists. Pretty good laugh for the time being at least, but I can't defend anyone calling this a decent game.