Faces

Overview

Faces, also known as Faces ...tris III, is a falling-block tile-matching puzzle game developed by Sphere, Inc. and published by Spectrum HoloByte (under license by ParaGraph) for DOS PC, Macintosh, and Amiga computers in 1990-1991.

The third in Spectrum HoloByte's "Tris" series of puzzle games (after their release of Tetris, along with their sequel Welltris) and designed by original Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov (along with Vladimir Pokhilko) from the Soviet-American joint venture company ParaGraph, Faces has players manipulating falling pieces in five columns as they attempt to form complete pictures of people's faces (using pieces representing a face's "chin", "lips", "nose', "eyes", and "forehead').

Similar to the rest of the series, this game contains Soviet themes (such as the use of hammer-and-sickle iconography as the logo's letter 'C', a twist on the Incorrect Usage of Cyrillic Letters concept). The PC and Macintosh versions were later included in the 1993 compilation Tetris Gold.

Gameplay

The goal of the game is to stack falling blocks in order, with each block bearing a part of a person's face: the chin, mouth, nose, eyes, or forehead. Each level features several different people's faces; creating a "perfect" face from the parts of a single person will clear the face and all blocks in the column underneath. Creating a mixed face will clear only the face itself and one block underneath. Each level uses a selection of personalities including historical figures, artists, scientists, and monsters. Levels at higher difficulties include a larger number of different personalities.

The game included two multiplayer modes: a hotseat tournament mode for up to 10 players (where players take turns playing a game of Faces using the same piece randomization) and a two-player linked-computer head-to-head mode. It also includes the ability to load custom graphics into the game, allowing players to replace the default faces with their own images (such as their family members).