Factotum 90 Reviews

Eh.

Fun puzzler that exercises the same logic-problem-solving part of your brain as Portal. Plus cute robots.

Factotum 90 has only 30 levels, but still manages (just) to pack in enough old school charm and moments of head scratching to satisfy your average 3D puzzle fan. The singleplayer co-op, and by that I mean you alternate control between two robots on a splitscreen, works well thanks to thoughtful and clear puzzle layouts allied to very good controls. There's no pixel perfect nonsense or split-second time constraints here. If anything, I'd say the game errs slightly on the easy side, but that's preferable IMO to getting frustrated. Oh, and achievement hunters will be happy to know it's a simple one to complete 100%. There's an achievement for finishing the last level, and 12 for pressing buttons, pulling levers and exploding bombs x number of times. One thing I would like to have seen is an option to toggle off the music, but that's the only real negative I have. Maybe couch coop and even online coop would have given it broader appeal. Overall it's a fairly solid 7/10 and definitely worth the sub-£5 price tag.

Factotum 90 is one of those puzzle games where you control three different sheep and have to get them to stand on the buttons to make the moving platforms go past the pits full of wolves. Only you only get two sheep, and they're actually robotty cube things, and I haven't seen anything as active as WOLVES just yet. Still, you get the idea. Everything has a sort of early-seventies look and feel. You could teleport the guy from *Silent Running* or the crew of the Dark Star into this place and they'd be right at home. I hope their actual homes didn't have quite this many hydraulically-controlled deck plates.

This is a nice little puzzle game about controlling two walker drones to reach the cargo lift and the end of each area. The puzzles gradually build in difficulty and complexity, and there wasn't a moment where I felt like I was missing a detail about a puzzle mechanic. If I ever felt lost, it was because I wasn't thinking hard enough. And the story was engaging as well, with a fair bit of humor to it. Even the ending was nice, if a bti cheesy. There was one annoying little bit around 5/6ths of the way in wherein the fact that the warp places you a few tile-lengths away from the exit meant that you sometimes fell into the plasma below. This tested my patience but, thankfully, this only happened on one puzzle. There was also another weird glitch I observed which would sometimes prevent one bot from walking onto the lift (by having it fall through into the plasma below) when the other bot was on it, but restarting the game seems to fix it for now, so it wasn't as bad. Overall, I definitely recommend this game. It is a fun little puzzler with a nice sense of humor and great style.

If you don't happen to have a controller you are fucked! There's nothing anywhere warning you about this prior to buying which in my book is false advertising.

This is a cool little puzzle game that is vaguely reminiscent of an old Amiga game by Pete Cooke called Tower of Babel. In that, you controlled three droids with different abilities, each of which could be controlled directly or programmed to execute a series of commands simultaneously to solve various puzzles. Factotum 90 has a much simpler conceit, only two droids, neither of which can be programmed only controlled alternately, both with the same abilities. Otherwise it's about using them cooperatively to navigate across a level, solving various small puzzles along the way. You might get one to stand on a button that activates a moving platform on which you've positioned the other, who can then activate a switch to turn off a force-field so the first droid can get through, that kind of thing. It's a pretty gentle puzzle game, not particularly challenging - you will probably not get stumped, it's mostly a case of seeing what you need to do, and then executing it. This is pretty satisfying for the most part, although some of the tasks seem like busywork (take box here, run back there, take second box here etc) but never to the point of tedium. Each level is short and sweet. You've guided by a British guy who does a good job with the script, he'll introduce each level and interject every now and then, although the story isn't going to surprise you at all. Annoyances? The elevator music can't be turned off, there's no "always run" button (and you will want to always run, as walking speed is quite slow), you collect data packets with... no apparent benefit, and there's a vague air of clunkiness to the whole thing. But I still enjoyed it.