Game: "Facade: A One-Act Interactive Drama"

Platforms: Windows XP/2000/ME, Macintosh OS X (in beta testing)

Publisher: [auto mata]

Developers: Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern

Genre: Interactive fiction

Number of players: 1

Not rated, but similar to T for teen (discussion of relationship themes)

The premise: Your old friends Trip and Grace invite you over for dinner, but the couple's happiness is a facade — you soon find yourself in the role of mediator as the conversation turns dicey. The result is a miniature dramatic production.

Game play: The game play begins as you show up at your friends' apartment door and overhear them bickering. Graphically, "Facade" uses a basic 3-D first-person navigation within the small apartment combined with typing in text as responses to the audible conversation. The mouse may also be clicked on the environment for some actions. Subtitling of the conversation is a helpful option.

The possible conversational topics early in the game range widely; playing the game twice will usually result in different threads and interactions, thereby presenting you with different decisions. In each case the conversation reveals the fissures in the marriage of your friends, and depending on the delicate balancing act of your actions and words, the end result of the evening can be quite varied. You have the option of playing either a male or female character.

The good/bad: "Facade" represents an evolutionary leap in the line of interactive fiction games first made popular in the '80s by Infocom with text-only games such as "Zork." Even recent examples that incorporate graphics and audio, such as General Coffee's "Future Boy," embody the standard paradigm of a solving a linear story line composed of a long series of puzzles. "Facade," in contrast, has no "correct" ending or predetermined plot arc. The pleasure is in simply watching what happens, in what is essentially an interactive one-act play.

There are no physical puzzles to solve, and your only tools are those of human interaction applied on the fly, as you type in what you imagine you would say.

"Facade" is the result of a volunteer effort by the developers, so an overall lack of polish is evident (and if the computer running the game is not fast enough, the conversational AI can crash while the game appears to continue). The interpretation of entered sentences is usually impressive, but sometimes the AI extracts a single keyword out of context. The graphics and navigation are simplistic, but these are not the point: The focus is clearly on realistic conversational audio and interactivity.

My take: Despite some rough edges, this game is a fascinating inaugural member of what we hope is a new genre. It also happens to be a free download, so "Facade" is definitely worth a try. Get it at www.interactivestory.net, and be prepared for the easy step of installing a bittorrent client to proceed with the download.

Robert Uyeyama, a University of Hawai'i-Manoa graduate student, is the founder of the Macintosh game site www.Macologist.org.