Evil Factory — A fun, quirky game from Nexon Korea

A fast-paced bomb-blasting boss rush, on the go

New from Nexon is ‘Evil Factory’: an action packed gauntlet of bosses and explosions which seems to leave you with a smile on your face every time you have to put it down.

Leo, our hero (foreground) whose helmet looks nothing like a basketball, is sent on a mission to destroy what remains of an evil organization: the Kraken.

When I decided to give Evil Factory a try, I was skeptical. In the interest of full disclosure, I do not consider myself a mobile gamer. In my opinion, mobile games suffer from a severe disadvantage when it comes to control; they often feel sloppy and awkward. My limited experience with action-oriented mobile games has left me jaded, so I’m a tough nut to crack. Evil Factory smashed me to pieces.

The Run-down

Evil Factory is a free-to-play boss-rush, available on Google Play and the App Store. You play as Leo, a demolition expert sent in to to squelch what remains of “the Kraken”: an evil organization which, until a secret base in Antarctica was discovered, was thought to have been gone for good.

Your main tool to accomplish this feat is bombs, lots of bombs. And things that hurl bombs. Oh and grenades. Also flame throwers. Oh, and then there are those turrets with mounted flame throwers… Sorry, I got carried away. Your job is to blow up an ethically-questionable research facility headed by an evil mad scientist with plans for world-domination, and you are not left wanting for means of accomplishing this.

Evil Factory also gives you a bullet-time mechanic which activates automatically whenever Leo is not actively moving. It comes in quite handy as the bosses have a penchant for hurling all manner of pain directly at your face.

Leo faces a variety of ridiculous-yet-imaginative foes, like an electric buffalo (left), and uh, that other… thing (right).

Notable Qualities

What impresses me the most is that no one aspect of Evil Factory stands out as the single reason why it’s fun to play. The game’s biggest strength is that every aspect of it has been given the attention it needs.

• Self-awareness. Evil factory is about blowing things up. The player wants to blow things up. Nexon knows this and has carefully crafted everything else in the game to maintain this central focus and not distract from actually having fun. The story is minimal. The dialog is also kept at a minimum, just enough to deliver some fun quips and give the player the instruction she needs. While playing I was never waiting impatiently to blow more things up.
• Pacing. The experience is fast and energizing. The bosses come at you as fast as you want them to. The music is delightful and keeps you in the zone. The menus don’t get in the way; navigating the menus itself is actually quite enjoyable due to the intuitive interface, quick animations and on-point sound design. Perhaps most importantly, the respawn time is practically nil; as soon as you die, you can hit a button and get right back into it.
• Control. My biggest worry turned out to be my biggest relief. As previously mentioned, I don’t have a huge amount of experience with action-oriented mobile games, so there was an adjustment period. But after only a couple bosses, the controls felt responsive and weren’t getting in the way.
• Polish. Every aspect of this game has received the polish it should. The art is fantastic. The music pumps you up. The dialogue is quirky. The cut-scenes deliver exactly what they need to without overstaying their welcome. The bosses are imaginative and continually present new challenges, following an appropriate difficulty curve. There are even a variety of mini-games — complete with scoreboards — which you unlock through gameplay, and which provide a wide variety of options for respite, should you desire it.

Free-to-Play

Evil Factory is free-to-play, which will always raise the following suspicion: is it pay-to-win? I played for quite a few hours without needing to send a dime, and under certain circumstances, one might not ever have to. Here’s how purchases work in Evil Factory.

To fight a boss, you spend a resource called ‘fuel’. The amount of fuel you have is a lot like a life count, except that you always spend fuel to attempt a boss, rather than it being strictly for respawning. When you run out of fuel, you can refill your tank by spending blue coins; you start with 6 or so of these. Blue coins can also be used for other purposes such as acquiring schematics for new weapons. You can purchase blue coins with real money, but it doesn’t seem like you’ll ever be forced to.

The schematics you can purchase are also dropped by bosses. Many things you can spend blue coins on can also be bought with ‘gold’, which is acquired purely in-game. Also, the game gives you a daily chest of goodies, which often contains blue coins.

So, if you don’t ever want to put the game down, you’ll probably want to drop a couple bucks on unlimited fuel or blue coins for other fun items, and believe me, Nexon deserves the support. But if you’re looking for a more casual experience, giving a boss a few goes on the subway to work for instance, then Evil Factory will still be loads of fun without costing you a thing.

Noooo! My beautiful creation!

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