IT BEGINS

 In today’s broke, jobless and rapidly approaching apocalyptic society, most people have had to give things up to make ends meet. Things such as eating food that isn’t ramen, basic utilities, their hopes and dreams, and their dignity.

Starvation now or heart disease later

 Something that gets put on the chopping block fairly early is entertainment, given how you don’t need that to live, and people have more pressing things to worry about such as “Do I have enough leather clothing and sports equipment at home to cobble together a mad max outfit?” or “Can I built a wrist-mounted crossbow out of stuff in my apartment?”.

You gotta be prepared, you wont fit in with the rest of the biker gang otherwise

 But you don’t necessarily need to stop playing video games, there's stuff out there you can play for free

"No shit"

No, not like that, I’m talking about stuff that is free to play, abandon ware, or just stuff that’s on the internet but you don’t need to pay for it to play it. That way you can continue to enjoy video games without having to resort to illegal activity to pay your rent! (If you haven’t already done so)

A better plan B than growing pot in your bathroom

That’s the point of this blog, I’ll point out the free stuff to play that’s out there in the dark and unknowable recesses of the internet and then you get to play it. Sounds more productive and helpful than blogging about what I ate for lunch.

OH GOD TOO LATE

 This isn’t a review site though, there's a GLUT of those on the net. I’ll put my own two cents in of course but if you want a more in-depth look at anything I talk about here there are far better places to go, this is just me going “hey, check this out”

First up is a little game called FAÇADE.

Dont you give me the Dream Works face, Trip

To start with, lets see what the developers had to say:
"Façade is an artificial intelligence-based art/research experiment in electronic narrative – an attempt to move beyond traditional branching or hyper-linked narrative to create a fully-realized, one-act interactive drama. Integrating an interdisciplinary set of artistic practices and artificial intelligence technologies, we have completed a five year collaboration to engineer a novel architecture for supporting emotional, interactive character behavior and drama-managed plot. Within this architecture we have built a dramatically interesting, real-time 3D virtual world inhabited by computer-controlled characters, in which the player experiences a story from a first-person perspective. Façade was publicly released as a freeware download / cd-rom in July 2005.

You, the player, using your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip’s marriage. No one is safe as the accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are forced to be made. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and Trip’s lives – motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time."

Huh, sounds legit. Here's what the internet had to say:


Not much I can say that will describe the game better than that, you can be whoever you want as there are an absurd number of names available, though the best one is undeniably "GONZALO". Act like a normal person and try to save their relationship or you can go batshit insane and talk about something else entirely. Or both, its up to you.


Façade is available for free at
http://www.interactivestory.net/#facade
No sign up needed, and if you're looking for a way to kill an hour or so its worth it.