Frantic Factory

If you like your puzzle solving then you’ll be looking to always find something fresh and a little different. If this is the case for you then you’ll have to have a closer look at Frantic Factory.

This game basically is an evolving business which needs your help in laying down the foundations to make the products get from the starting gate to the end via a network of conveyor belts, gizmos and catapults. If you are like me, a little slow on a Sunday morning, then you’ll be glad to see there’s an easy setting which gives you 10 missions to accomplish. Should this be something a little too simple for your standards then you can give yourself more of a challenge by taking on the medium and advanced modes.

Unlike most factories I’ve ever seen, in this game there are few big wide open spaces and rooms, instead, you have a maze of corridors and small chambers where you will have to be quite creative in the layout of the machines and conveyor belts to ensure that the cake or robot is transported quickly and efficiently from A to B.

If you remember playing the Sims or Theme Hospital, you’ll have a bit of an idea on how this game works. You use the number pad to move the cursor around and highlight the equipment to use and then the select button to place it in the desired location. For some areas you will need to rotate the equipment, and with a press of the key you’ll easily spin it 90 degrees. You are given a clear indicator of whether it is possible or not to place the equipment down as the outline will be red when it’s not available and turn green when it is.

As with any business, time is money and so, you have a race against the clock and you’ll be rewarded by bigger cash bonuses for doing the task successfully in as little time as possible.

The main problem I found with this game effects the score and time taken in a level to do the obvious - by which, I mean the controls. Unfortunately cycling between conveyor belt and machine is quite cumbersome and unnecessarily terrible. The instructions say that 7 and 9 rotate between the available options e.g. conveyor belt, delete/undo and machines - sadly in truth it does no such thing! Instead, you flip between either conveyor belt or delete and it takes a number of random key presses to eventually highlight the equipment for you to use. It’s fair to say that once you have managed to pick the right bit of kit for the job it’s pretty straight forward. However, if you have to pick from two or more bits of equipment as well as the conveyor belt option, the random key presses takes even longer to establish.

The one saving grace about this game is that the conveyor belt automatically connects from one to the next. This is a bit of a double edged sword as some times they end up connecting to the wrong piece of equipment and you have to then have to reverse the process until you get it right.

Ultimately if you enjoy your puzzle and lateral thinking games then you’ll be pretty happy with this one. If however you get easily frustrated by the rather poor controls, then you may find yourself pulling your hair and anything else that can be pulled within arms reach in sheer frustration.

Rating 67%

Positives

Variety of settings from easy to hard

30 games to play (10 in each level)

Quite addictive

Negatives

Very frustrating

Quite repetitive

Terrible controls let this game down

You can only progress from to hard levels when completing all before

Can’t select a level or replay a level in its own right – even when completed

Once completed it’ll have limited ‘stickability’