Reviewer: breley (Bryan Eley)
Product: PDAmill Fun Factory v1.0
Price: US$14.95
Device tested: Samsung SCH-i760, Windows Mobile 6 OS
All work and no play makes Jack (not to be confused with our own Jack Cook, mind you!) a dull boy, so the good people at PDAmill have devised a way for people at the end of a long work day to, well, do some more work. Wait! Wait! It's not what you're thinking. No, it's not more endless hours of toil, but rather a condensed 5 day work week of 5 unique "jobs" for you to do. No goofing off, though, or you might get a virtual firing from The Boss. Each day at the Fun Factory entails a different job:
Monday - Unscramble pictures as a sort of Graphic Designer in Slider
Tuesday - Quality Control by removing defective toys in Crane
Wednesday - Quality Assurance by matching identical items in Memory
Thursday - Logistics by directing shipments to their destinations in Selector
Friday - Environmental Remediation by popping Balloons (it prevents animals from devouring released balloons)
Click the link to read the rest...
On starting up the game, you are first presented with the Main Menu screen.
Selecting New Game allows the user the option, unsurprisingly, to start a new game, or else do a bit of practicing, sort of a "career orientation" if you will.
Settings allows users to adjust screen orientation, sound effects and music levels, as well as change screen orientation, which is by the way always landscape.
Continue returns users to the previous area they were working on in the previous game.
Info provides users with a background on the game's objective and what each day's "shift" involves. You can go backwards or forwards to see what each day's job requires, access the High Scores screen, and return to the Main Menu.
Reporting for duty, Sir...
When starting the "Story" (Funny, I never thought of work as a story, but if so, do I get any additional royalties?) you will be presented with a screen full of lettered balloons to select your name. Simply tap the appropriate balloons to pop them and then click Next. Popped balloons will always be replenished, so if you've got a name like Oompa Loompa, Fun Factory's Human Resources module balloon auto-restock has you covered.
Monday starts with a 40-piece image that get scrambled in Slider. Your job, should you choose to accept, is to unscramble the image as fast as you can. Note the green balloon on the left. It functions as a sort of timer, rising slowly such that when it reaches the top and hits the spikes, POW! Scrambling job over!
Unscramble allows for 5 hints, briefly showing you an image of the solution, then returns back to its mixed-up state.
The real trick here is that some of the pieces are correctly positioned, whereas many are not. Moving the pieces is a fairly simple proposition involving dragging a puzzle piece to another location, with the original occupying piece then being swapped to the first piece's position. Trouble is, if you guess wrong, then you potentially have just misplaced two pieces instead of just one! Note that every week each puzzle becomes increasingly challenging, and some puzzles have multiple areas that are very similarly colored, so paying attention to detail is a must.
Break Time?
Unlike real life, where you're in for x number of hours on your job and often only with a set time where you can take a break, Fun Factory allows users to duck out for an indeterminate amount of time by clicking on the Exit button. This takes you to the Paused screen where you can either take a break, exit to the Main Menu, or Resume the game. If you elect to return to the Main Menu, your progress will be saved and you can return later by selecting Continue from the Main Menu.
Back to Work!
Tuesday lets you play Crane Operator in Crane to remove defective toys? Remember that game at the Arcade or at kiddie restaurants where you controlled a crane to grab a prize? Same idea, except that here you need only press the crane button to remove the defects from a conveyor belt.
In the upper right picture, see that yellow bear on its side missing legs? That's what you'd be aiming for. When the defective toy gets into the target zone, press the Crane button and remove the offending item.
I have you now!
Seems simple enough, doesn't it? On higher levels, you will be treated to two cranes, each with its own conveyor belt to monitor—and the conveyor belts may move in opposite directions of each other so as to make a real coordination challenge. On the right note the four faces. These are relative indicators of how you are doing. The more efficient you are, the higher on the ranking ladder you rise. The smiling fellow with the hair at the top of the ranking is what you are aiming for.
Is this a test of the Peter Principle?
Wednesday work tests your pattern matching skills in Memory, wherein you must click on boxes to discover what it holds and find an identical match.
Oops! Better luck next time for me...and note I've got the balloon deadline, too! As each matching level increases, the number of boxes increases, but not the deadline timer, alas. The boxes held quite a number of different items, balls, bears, bottles, vases and so forth in differing colors. One peculiarity I noticed that sort of bugged me was the fact that there was a certain amount of latency when two items were selected. This had two observable effects: 1) it could increase the the amount of time to clear the screen and 2) showed a peculiar side effect if not a bug outright. If I'm rushing through the game and select two matches and then select another box before the matching items disappear, the matches don't vanish but the last selected item remains. The net result is that you have to wait a fraction of a second longer for the items to disappear before continuing with the game making the game unintentionally more challenging.
Thursday you get to play logistics in Sorter. The screen appears with a destination route. Your job is to ensure the colored balls (shipments if you will) reach the appropriate color-coded destination. The way you do this is by tapping the arrows and rotating the directional arrows clockwise in 90 degree increments to point to the correct pathway for the shipment to reach that destination. After each item is sent on its way, you will see the next item flash in the starting box so you'll know what destination to choose. But beware! If you point the arrows such that they point back at the approaching ball, it will explode and you'll lose that shipment. The same result will occur if you guide a ball back to its point of origin or to the wrong color destination.
Oh no! Say goodbye to the Green shipment...
Here you can see higher level where an additional item and path have been added. Unfortunately, doing a screencap PC-side and tapping the PDA screen isn't very conducive to good gameplay, so I'm about to get dinged above. Also note that there may be more than one way to route ball shipment to its destination. Like the Crane section, this module has no time limit, merely a set number of shipments per level.
TGIF, or Pop those Friday Balloons! Come on, admit it. Most everyone has a latent desire to pop balloons, right? While I'm not sure of the economic benefit of obliterating a helium-filled balloons, it's nonetheless fun to do. The trick is getting the maximum number of points by quickly zapping similarly-colored balloons in quick succession. By doing so you can accrue points for a trio of say, red balloons and get 1+3+5 = 9 points as opposed to different colored balloons for only 3 points: 1+1+1. As you pop each balloon, its value will be momentarily displayed at the balloon's former location.
I'm ending my week with a, well, bang!
While seemingly simple in implementation, it's actually quite tricky since the balloons wend their way up in snake-like fashion, and often overlap each other in tight clusters so speed and precision tapping with the stylus is key. The effect of solid, rapid and repetitive tapping of my touchscreen device concerns me a bit, but I suspect that's more an issue of my perception than actual effect on the touchscreen. One thing I thought might have been a nice bit of eye or ear candy is to have some "reward" indication for a sequence of balloons done, whether it be a chime for a series of 3 similar balloon colors or maybe a larger gold value number in place of the smaller white ones.
REVIEW TIME
Finally, at the end of the week, you are rated for your performance. If you fail miserably, you are rewarded with an irate firing from an obviously upset Boss. Depending on how you do during the course of the week, you might get a verbal warning from the boss, or even fired outright before the week is through!
Rats! At least he doesn't have a combover like a certain mogul (the Donald, not the phone type...)
If you manage to make it without being fired for gross incompetence or slacking off, you will get rewarded with a Rating screen and maybe a posting to the high scores Top Five.
So my wife tells me. Well, we can't all be super-achievers, can we?
Final Thoughts
PDAmill put a nice little package together with these five mini-games. The 20 minutes soundtrack is, as is often the case in PDAmill games, very well done. There are assorted cute little bits of eye candy here and there, such as occasional steam emerging from the corner pipes, music increasing in tempo in those modules with time deadlines to reinforce the need to hurry up. Graphics are bright and crisp, and gameplay is very smooth. I did find the matching delay and selection item an occasional minor nuisance in Memory, but other than that issue I found the game very tight. I wouldn't classify this game as a stress reliever—the deadlines in Memory and Scramble along with the pass/fail aspects of Crane and Sorter can make for some harried gameplay, but it can be a good exercise in hand-eye coordination. All in all Fun Factory is both challenging and enjoyable.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
FINAL Final Thoughts...
The real tragic figure at the Fun Factory in my estimation is the unnamed Boss. Too wide in girth for a belt, smoking a cigar, ruddy complexion with excessive sweating and a face suggesting anger-management issues (probably the result of workers snickering behind his back about his white socks and highwater pants) indicate a probable hypertensive train-wreck just waiting to happen. Unnamed Bossman really needs some stress relief and a vacation or Fun Factory's healthcare costs will go through the roof. Somebody needs to steer that man over to PDAmill so he can get a game to take his mind off work and relieve stress himself!
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