C&VG


Factory Breakout
By Poppysoft
Spectrum 48K

 
Published in Computer & Video Games #35

Factory Breakout

Factory Breakout takes a pinch of Pac-Man, a twist of Reactor and mixes it all up in a final screen of one of the fastest climbing games I have played in the last week — and I've played a lot.

Although borrowing bits and pieces from other games, the overall design is original and reasonably entertaining.

You are Zirky, the last remaining robot in a factory gone crazy. Can you help him escape?

Factory Breakout

It won't be easy, though, as the whole place is patrolled by three homicidal Pac-monsters. Unlike the ghosts in the Pac-you-know, these nasties reappear seconds after you have killed them.

Before duelling with the ghosts - which is the most enjoyable part of this game - you have to get through two preliminary screens which eventually become just a nuisance on your way to the main part of the game.

The first prelim. screen challenges an embryonic Zirky to survive an attack on all sides by killer rays. He has to spin round in his shell blasting the deathly fingers before they make contact with the shell and crack it.

Factory Breakout

When Zirky hatches out into a fully grown droid, he has to dash through a corridor of laser spitting nasties to get into the key room.

This is the fun part of Factory Breakout. It's quite tricky as your movements are limited — just left and right and up the moving lifts on the left and right of the frame. You can only go down by falling through the trap doors.

The key to escape from the factory will eventually appear on this screen — but first you have to run over all the trapdoors, making them turn red, then blue before they eventually disappear.

Sounds easy, but it's not. Mind you, I did get quite close after about two hours play which makes me slightly concerned about the lasting appeal of this game. Once you've got out of that factory, what does Zirky do next?