Funny Face

Humor and graphics aren't always friends. Funny Face is proof — a DOS clunker from 1990 that tries to bite in the spirit of Lemmings, but misses by a mile.

You're a Chinese character with a rubber-like face that you need to maneuver across a screen full of traps, enemies, and obstacles. The goal is simple: reach the exit. But getting there isn't about nailing jumps or timing your moves — it's about manipulating your own face, which you can "sculpt" during gameplay. It's not a deep system, though. It's mostly about how various deformations of your mask let you squeeze through holes or fit into tight spaces. The sound is nearly incomprehensible, the visuals look like an unfinished supermarket knockoff.

The controls are the kind of thing that works on PC but feels clumsy. Movement is sluggish, hardware response is nothing to write home about, and when you finally make it to the next level, you realize you mostly just conquered tedium, not any real challenge. The most interesting element — that deformable face — is used so sparingly it barely impacts the experience. It's short on content, tempo, and ideas.

Funny Face is a curiosity that landed in the DOS emulator vault for good reason. It wasn't the game puzzle fans were waiting for. The lesson here is that not every idea deserves to be executed — sometimes the joke is just that the game exists at all, rather than anyone actually playing it.

Today it's viewed as a relic — interesting trivia for archivists, not entertainment. You play it in an emulator mostly to see what it's about, and then you're glad you can move on to something that didn't get shelved precisely because it had nothing to offer.