Fugdale’s Funhouse

These two psychology-based games will put you in the driver’s seat. You will have to choose actions or words as you progress through both games and your actions and words will have consequences. These games fall into the choose-your-own adventure category and both have unique interfaces. So make the best decisions and see how they play out.

Alter Ego - Live Your Entire Life Again

This text-based game feels a bit like taking an online survey or personality test. The simple interface consists of a series of questions and choices. You progress by choosing from the options presented by clicking radio buttons next to your choices.

Start by choosing your sex and completing an initial brief survey about your likes and dislikes. This establishes your basic demeanor throughout the game. You will then experience your own birth and start as a baby experiencing the first sensations of life.

The game progresses through 7 major stages of a person’s life, including infancy, childhood, teenage years, young adult, college age, middle adult and old age. Various icons for love, family, relationships, brain development, emotions, etc present themselves on a tree chart. You can explore each type of development in any order you choose. Sometimes your choices will make it so you can’t follow certain paths and other paths will open up if you make the right choices. The fact that you can make many different choices and develop your personality in many different ways makes this exercise in reliving your life very interesting.

As you get older, you will have new challenges, including finding jobs, starting relationships, getting married (or not), having kids, saving money, increasing your knowledge, etc. If you don’t have a good job, you won’t be able to afford a house. You can even acquire credit card debt. If you so choose to go down the darker paths of life, your game experience will reflect that.

At any stage of the game you can skip to the next level if you desire and you can also look at your stat sheet to see how you have developed. You will receive ratings on many different areas of your life including: familial, intellectual, physical, social, vocational. Aspects of your personality receive grades as well. You will develop in areas of calmness, confidence, expressiveness, trustworthiness, and happiness. Your income, debt, job and relationship status, and acquisitions will display as well. The game will save your progress so you won’t have to play the lengthy game in one sitting.

As you complete each section of life, the game will provide you with a detailed evaluation of the kind of person you have become. You will get advice on how to turn things around and areas where you don’t meet societal norms. You can even make certain choices in all areas of life which will cause you to die prematurely and in some cases you will cause the death or suffering of others.

The game seems so completely fleshed out, that psychologist could almost use it as a test run for making more positive choices in life. Although I wouldn’t reccommend the game for those purposes. Alter Ego feels like a text-based version of the SIMS. If you would like to relive your life and make different choices this time around, you should definitely try this game on for size.

Facade - Stop the Bickering Couple

One of the most original games available, Facade puts you in the middle of an emotional situation of having to help your friends reconcile their disastrous relationship. You must first download this game to your computer, but it plays on both mac and pc. Once started you will select from the list of available names (no luck if your name is Luwanda or Rupert). Then you will get a phone call from your good pal, Trip, to come over for dinner. When you arrive you will quickly discover that Trip and his wife, Grace are having a heated discussion.

From the moment arrive, everything you say will cause some sort of reaction from the couple. The game puts you in a 3-D graphical scene. You navigate around the room using your arrow keys. You can select objects with your mouse using the hand icon. You also use the hand icon to do certain physical things like kissing or hugging your friends. (Try kissing the person of the same sex for interesting reactions). Other than that, you simply type what you want to say and the characters instantly react to whatever you type. Sometimes they go on arguing and sometimes they get offended or you bring about an awkward silence. When the situation heats up, occasionally swear words get bandied about, so this game is definitely recommended for mature players.

This game truly has remarkable game play. The characters seem to respond to almost anything you tell them and their reactions feel appropriate most of the time. The situation you find yourself in feels volatile, however, and sometimes the best of compliments will get a negative reaction. I had to play through the scenario many times before I could actually get the couple to reconcile. Usually I get booted out the door within 5 minutes for saying something mean. (I enjoy telling Grace to shut her mouth and watching her get all stunned). But the more you get them to talk about themselves and what is bothering them, the more likely they will reconcile in the end.