Factotum 90 (Xbox One) - Review

Factotum 90 is available now on the Xbox One and is priced at £4.79/$5.99. It currently has an additional 20% off its launch price for Gold Members (making it less that £4!).

Factotum 90 is the first Xbox One game to come from one-man development team TACS Games. Originally it was released on the Wii U as Factotum, but it has now made the jump to Xbox One, with higher res, more colours and some shiny new special effects.

Now don't get me wrong Factotum 90 isn't going to win any beauty awards anytime soon. It is quite simplistic graphically, with textures etc. leaving a lot to be desired. But we're all willing to overlook some slightly dodgy graphics for a good game, aren't we?

Well good, because that's what you get with Factotum 90. Yeah it's not as pretty as other puzzle game son the Xbox One, but it's a damn good puzzle game that is ridiculously cheap. The biggest praise I can give this game though, is that the levels progress really well. You know how in some puzzle games you suddenly peak at like the tenth level and it takes you forever to get past, because they're suddenly throwing everything ever at you? Factotum 90 doesn't do this, instead opting to slightly increase the difficulty, length and complexity of the puzzle just slightly in each level. I find that this is a hard balance to reach in puzzle games - some are far too easy all the way through, whilst some have an insanely steep learning curve - but Factotum 90 (for me at least) gets it just right...rare in a puzzle game these days.

You control two little robots that activate separately and each have their own portion of the screen. When they activate four little legs pop out from underneath and the boxy robots scutter about like spiders (which I have to admit, creeped me out a little). You use these robots to navigate your way around the ship, solving puzzles along the way. It's an interesting mechanic, and one that clearly shoes you which console this game was born on, with the duals screen capabilities of the Wii U pad lending itself so obviously to this type of gameplay. I was at first a little worried how this game would translate to the Xbox One but it does so very well, with the screen just cutting in half so you have a screen for each robot.

Controls are simple and effective too, the only thing that really got on my nerves was upon pausing the game. Actions still continue in the background, so if you;re on a moving floor it will continue to move whilst paused. And I seem to have gotten used to using B to back out of the pause menu, something which this game does;t allow for. But these are really just minor niggles.

£4 is nothing in terms of price for a game on the current gen and you could do much worse than picking up Factotum 90. I for one am interested to see what else this developer could do for Xbox One, so why not pick this up and support this one man team. I can guarantee you've all spent more on games that will have offered much less enjoyment.

7/10 TRY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review.