Facemaker

Facemaker

Overview & History

Released in 1983 by Activision for the ColecoVision—with a conversion originally programmed by Alan Miller for the Atari 2600—Facemaker is a uniquely educational and delightfully quirky puzzle-entertainment title. Standing apart from the era's standard shoot-'em-ups and platformers, this game challenges players to construct, animate, and memorize expressive human faces. Rather than battling aliens or navigating dungeons, you are cast as a digital plastic surgeon and puppeteer, manipulating facial features to match target expressions or playing a high-stakes game of "Simon Says" with facial animations.

Gameplay Features & Mechanics

The core gameplay of Facemaker revolves around two distinct modes: Creation and Animation. In the primary mode, players cycle through a rotating selection of eyes, noses, mouths, and hair styles to assemble a complete face on the screen. Once built, you can trigger specific animations—making the character wink, smile, frown, stick out its tongue, or even cry real tears. The secondary memory-test mode forces you to replicate a sequence of animated expressions generated by the computer, growing progressively faster and more complex. Success rewards you with whimsical audio-visual feedback, while errors result in humorous visual resets. It stands as a charming, remarkably ahead-of-its-time synthesis of creative play and cognitive training.

Keyboard Controls

• Arrow Keys / D-Pad: Cycle through facial features and menu options
• Action Keys: Select current feature / Trigger specific facial animations
• Enter: Start / Pause the game