This single player Portal mod features, new soundtrack, new level transitions, custom voice acting and some clever puzzles.
There’s also a cool introduction video.
This is the first episode and as such I have added “Ep1″ to the title.
- Title: Factum Solus
- File Name: prtl1-sp-factum-solus.7z
- Size : 98.59Mb
- Author: Fearlezz
- Date Released: 10 August 2010
- Copy the factumsolus folder into your SourceMods folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- Factum Solus should now be listed in your Library tab.
If you require more help, please visit the Help page.
Fearlezz has created a nice little intro video that expalins some things to do with the mod. It’s a great idea, but there are some users who add launch paramters to mods, including -novid. If you are one of those users please don’t add that parameter for the first play through, the video is worth watching.
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Please Note: Panoramic images only are available in full screen mode. You can either open one by clicking the image link above or by saving it to your computer and then opening it locally.
How to use: Once the image is open and your cursor is on the image, press and hold your left mouse button and move around the image. Use your mouse wheel to scroll in and out of the panoramic image.
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Click on the thumbnails below to open a 800 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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Please note: These statistics are valid from December 2010
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This mod is NOT suitable for use with MapTap
11th August 2010
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11th August 2010
This review contains spoilers.
The better a mod is the more critical I seem to feel. Now that I’ve said that, let me continue by saying I really enjoyed this mod and it has so many wonderful things about it, that I’ll get to, but almost immediately it pissed me off and I nearly stopped playing.
AFter the first very basic level, you move into an area when toxic liquid starts falling on you. It’s clear you need to get the hell out of there ASAP. Falling down a hole takes you into a much larger area that allows you to escape. So far, so good. The problem is that I truly believe Fearlezz made a serious design error by effectively killing me within 2 minutes of starting the mod.
Whilst the solution to this particular puzzle is not that hard, being able to find that solution is too timed constrained. I died at least 3 times before I figured out what I needed to do and another 4 times trying to do it properly. I don’t mind dying when trying difficult things, although I prefer puzzles that don’t kill me, but I just felt this was too much right from the start.
Once I was in a bad mood I became critical of every last detail.
For me this mod was not tested enough. I see that there were 8 testers but did any of them test the final release for the first time? I doubt it. When testers start testing something they tend to lose that fresh look a new testers gives things and I always think a final mod should have at least one completely new tester.
Things that need fixing include the English subtitles (there are some mistakes in spelling), at least one door allowed me to partially pass through without opening, invisible walls in the room from the pano (stopped me exploring. I was also able to through the cube into an area I could reach, meaning I had to reload.) and finally the last room. I got stuck under the floor twice and once the whole room just froze.
I didn’t see any “Deep story” mentioned in the ModDB description and that’s pretty frustrating.
Okay that’s the bad done with. Onto the good.
The custom voice acting and audio treatment is excellent. Well done for that. The level transitions are good but I didn’t like going outside my character. The puzzles are great and easy enough for me to do without so silly complicated jump. The intro video is cool but all the information should have been included in a readme in case it was missed.
In conclusion, it’s a great mod but the beginning issue and the buggy last level stop it from being a “Personal Favourite” I definitely look forward to playing Episode Two, but as I mentioned to Fearlezz, a stand alone mod would be preferable to adding files to this release.
Play it, I’m sure you will love it, and don’t forget to mention how you feel about the second puzzle.
11th August 2010
I thought Phillip was probably exaggerating about the 2nd map. I’m a persevering soul. I have to be, I’m not a great gamer. But honestly, that map is just a PITA. I can see an energy ball, and the catcher above my head on the other side, but getting the former to the latter, with the screen flashing in the darkness is not my idea of fun. I quit the game before I worked it out. Will I reload? Probably, but only because the screenshots are kinda enticing.
11th August 2010
I’ve been waiting for Factum Solus for a while now. I’m usually not interested with portal mods and maps but I took a gamble with Gamma Energy which re-peaked my interest. And boy was I loving Factum Solus. Great aesthetic, interesting chambers and mechanics, cool level transitions, well written dialogue from the Glados equivalent “Ben” and the promise of varying difficulty levels in the chambers.
There was just one big problem. I started playing at about 15 past 1 in the morning (I been waiting all day) but by 2 I had finished. I was stunned in utter disbelief. There wasn’t even any big challenge to end on, the game just kind of fizzled out with a whisper. The credits rolled and I just assumed all I played was some sort of huge pre-credits sequence but no it was over! Look I know this was an episode and seriously 15 minutes? It’s not like I’m amazingly adept at Portal either I am average. This has been in development for a long time and for 15 minutes of gameplay I felt cheated. You could say every chamber was being polished to a mirror shine but no not at all as can be seen by all the bugs Phillip found. It’s like someone offered me a delicious cake let me take a nibble then took the cake sway and told me to wait another unknown period of time before I could take another bite. You can’t let a donkey nibble a carrot then dangle said carrot in front it’s nose from 500 yards because he’s not going to bother with your games and try to mate with the nearest stag instead.
Another problem I had was the fact I saw none of this multi difficulty chambers besides maybe one section where you could use a gangway to get a bit higher in the chamber and even then it didn’t seem to effect the chamber by much. Maybe he was referring to later episodes but if that’s the case STOP DANGLING A CARROT IN FRONT OF MY FACE I AM NOT A DONKEY!.
Even though I complain I have to give the game a play it now because that brief blink of an eye game play was so enthralling. Go play it but don’t be suckered in this isn’t even as long as a demo
5 Word Review
AWESOME SAUCE wait, it’s over?
P.S In response to what Phillip said about the 2nd puzzle it took me 3 goes but I wasn’t at the point of frustration at any point and I like the fact it took me by surprise starting with something really simple then throwing me into a panic situation.
12th August 2010
Referring to the second chamber only: I think it suffered from not being lit in a teaching, educational way. Also, I hated the fact that I didn’t get to watch the mod’s first awesome particles first hand, but was forced to run from them in the other direction. Also, I think the trigger_hurt for the falling toxins never turns off even if the particles do turn off, and that’s kind of lame.
12th August 2010
I wish I could share your enthusiasm, but I am not going to play it. I would much rather beat something to death slowly with a crowbar, instead of go here go there.
12th August 2010
my computer is run on hamster power. but I did manage to beat the whole mod, and whilst I liked the puzzles, and the story, and how things kept trying to kill you, but what I disliked was the fact it wasn’t tested before release (I know it was tested during development, but as Phillip said it needed more testing of the final product) you see, there were texture glitches and nodraw glitches in the first 3 rooms, where textures started bugging out and it was exceptionaly bad in the 3rd room,
meant you had to witness the void glitch, where the screen starts having some kind of screen seizure until you respawn, this is usaly caused by the player seeing a nodraw brush, that is separating the void from the player’s space, and what appeared to be an overlay brush (in which a brush was textured with an overlay, instead of being applied one. this much fail at the beginning of the mod almost tempted me to quit, and I am glad I didn’t because the rest of the mod had great moments. but because of my Hamster powered computer I would like him to CUT DOWN ON THE PARTICLES, going through
was like walking through a jagged version of the matrix because of the gross amount of smoke frankly I would like Fearless to re-release ep1 before finishing ep2 the rest of the mod was in need of optimizing… even the simplest rooms had a slight twinge of lag which gave me a bit of a headach (lucky for me it was short and ended on a good note)
so to recap,
-needs more testing
-needs to be optimized
-needs reduced particles, mainly less smoke and dust.
+ overall a great play
+ the skill level of the puzzles compensated for the lag problems
+ the storyline was deep enough.
+ it reminded me of the good ol’ days where I would spend hours playing 2D sidescrollers where the basic premise was trial and error
+ great mapping (dispite the lighting/texture errors and lag)
12th August 2010
OFF TOPIC: Anyone notice how a square room looks awesome in the panoramic view preview?
If only someone made a map like that, all curves and disorientating.
But then what would the panoramic view preview look like THEN?
13th August 2010
This mod is truly polarizing, as it does certain things incredibly well, and at the same time other things are just outright done badly. This COULD have been a personal favorite of mine if not for a staggering number of places that just didn’t work the way they should have.
PROS:
Custom Voice Acting – While I love Gamma Energy, Flash Version Map pack, and many other mods that recycle GlaDOS’s lines generically, It’s honestly starting to wear on me. The niggle to this is that even though Factum Solus had a custom voice actor, the mod still ends up recycling far more of GlaDOS’s lines than is really warranted.
Elaborate Architectural Movement – This was obviously inspired by what was seen from Portal 2, but the morphing of entire walls and rooms is honestly quite fascinating. They added a small layer of confusion that made simple puzzles seem more difficult than they actually were, and also added many more chances for “behind the scenes” exploration.
Epic Scope – HUGE rooms. Even though it didn’t make much of a difference in terms of actual danger, having 20+ rocket turrets gunning for you all at the same time just FEELS like it’s more dangerous.
CONS:
Poor Beta Testing – This is basic stuff that I found just through a single playthrough. These things should have been caught, and they should have been fixed, even if it meant pushing the release date back.
1) The death water stream really should actively carry you down the hole. I sat there for several minutes wondering if it would stop. When it didn’t, I jumped down, I was not even AWARE that the death water level was even rising until I already saw the fog rising through the grate which meant it was already too late to survive. This could have been addressed by having a graduated floor where you could directly observe the water level filling in the lowest section of the floor and then the next lowest, etc as the water level rose.
This problem was compounded by how slow the energy sphere moves, how far it has to travel, and how long it takes to dissipate if it misses, you have pretty much 2 – 3 attempts to get the energy ball to its receptacle before you run out of time, and that’s IF you know ahead of time exactly what you need to do. Even knowing what to do, with how far away the portals needed to be placed, even a single pixel off target was enough to cause the energy ball to miss its receptacle and waste enough time that you still couldn’t beat the deadline. This is compounded even further by the fact that the grating is difficult to see through to tell where you should be aiming at all.
1a) Even after the energy ball gets into the receptacle, and the death water stops pouring, walking over to where it WAS pouring still causes you to take damage as if it was still flowing. and when trying to jump through a portal out of the cage, I ended up losing momentum for some reason and just falling straight down into the death water with no way to get back out.
2) The room that completely reconfigures can be beaten without pressing the button to open the door simply by creating the portal on the wall right next to the receptacle. Even at an oblique angle, the energy ball will still be captured.
3) The next room has a the hot laser, but does it even constitute a puzzle when there’s absolutely no other place you can create the portals except for where you need them to be created? I’ll chalk this up to being a teaching map, but I still personally would have suggested increasing the room size, and make it so the platform only would move while the hot laser continued to hit its target. Which would require you to use portals to aim the hot laser at its target until the platform was at the near side, and place the portal that had the hot laser entering it up above the moving platform. The moving platform would then be stopped allowing you to go through the portal to land on it (avoiding the hot laser) and then you would use portals to reactivate the laser to let the platform resume carrying you to the other side.
4) The next map section features the room that phillip used for his panoramic image. I actually find this ironic as 50% of what the panoramic image showed was completely explorable. Using invisible walls to keep you from jumping over. (this isn’t a bug, but it is dissapointing. It shouldn’t have been THAT hard to make teh fences a little higher or put some other obstruction that made sense why you couldn’t jump over it) this is also when you first discover that you can’t pick up barrels. Why?
4a) If the companion cube gets destroyed, a portal will open in the floor and dispense a new cube. This is perhaps the worst possible method and location to spawn a new cube through. It is possible to A) accidentally bump into the cube before it goes through the portal and wind up with it stuck on the other side where you can’t get to it or even destroy it so another cube can be sent and B) It is actually possible to fall through the portal yourself and end up trapped in a black room that you can’t get out of. It would have been far simpler and safer to have a dispenser chute in the room where you got the original cube from and just be able to go back and get a new one if the old one was destroyed.
5) After getting through the previous chamber, you have 3 sets of platforms that move out to block your path, unfortunately, they are slow enough that you should technically be able to beat them. You are blocked by another invisible wall. Thankfully the platforms wont squish you, but it’s still annoying to be blocked by something that isn’t there.
6) Right after your portal gun is disabled, if you go through the orange portal that shows up on the wall, and then immediately back out before going all the way through, you wind up getting trapped with no way forward.
In the fire chamber it is again possible to destroy the cube and fall through the portal that dispenses a new one (or block the cube and get yourself stuck permanently) There is absolutely no reason this chamber couldn’t have included a standard cube dispenser.
7) In the next chamber that implements the hot laser, if you reload from the autosave just before you enter the chamber, you will wind up with the storage cube stuck in the tube. Fortunately this can be reached by jumping and grabbing the cube which will dislodge it. It is also possible to have the cube get stuck under one of the several doors that you have to take it through. When this happens, it may just disappear entirely, leaving you stuck yet again.
9) In the next chamber (right before the room that has the portal gun) it’s possible to climb onto the piston that holds the platforms, jump up to the ledge and then over the fence where you will end up trapped.
10) in the room with the portalgun(blue only), if you save before the cube drops, and reload from that save, you’ll end up with another case where the cube gets stuck in the dispenser. This one can’t be reached.
Excessive 3rd Person Perspective – Okay, I get it, they came up with a cool new way to move you from one section to another. But it’s not even a particularly flashy thing to watch, so why does it constantly toss you out of character to watch yourself get hurled up in the air? The first cutscene I could forgive, but after that it should have just stuck to 1st person perspective even as it launched you.
CONCERN:
Simple Puzzles Disguised as Complex – Ultimately no puzzle by itself was at all difficult. Everything was a fairly simple puzzle disguised by constant motion and/or excessive scope (needing to aim or notice details from across entire length of large map) Some might consider this a good thing. I view this with apprehension. If the author is CAPABLE of more complex puzzles, then I look forward to it. If this the limit of the author’s ability to create puzzles, then the constant movement and scale are going to wear thin very quickly.
14th August 2010
This mod got it for me for the fact that it has a story.
I mean, most Portal mods are simply one thing: puzzles puzzles puzzles. While there are some cases, like in the recent Gamma Energy, where thats not a bad thing, its fun to see a new mod where the history is more of a main focus than the puzzles.
One of the interesting things this mods focuses on is
this new AI that is guiding you through the maps. Ken was enjoyable like GLaDOS was, I just felt that there were some emotions lacking here.
The architecture on Factum Solus was really open and innovative. The architecture on the last room,
is used on such an incredible way that I could even compare it to the dynamic floor on Portal 2.
For me, the most interesting puzzle in this mod was, what I call “Indiana Jones and the Epic Puzzle of Doom”, where
But why did I give it a Personal Favorite? For two reasons: the history, and the new content. Sometimes, having something different can really alter how much can someone enjoy the mod.
Factum Solus: a new take on the Portal universe with creative puzzles (if you’re looking for hardcore puzzles, don’t get this!)
16th August 2010
@ Grey Acumen
Maybe, just maybe those bugs you mentioned were caught by some of the playtesters (I know I did) and were reported back to Fearlezz. I agree they should have been fixed before release, but don’t claim that’s its bad beta testing
17th August 2010
I wasn’t intending to levy blame solely on the heads of beta testers, but rather the entire beta testing process, which includes both beta testers catching problems and giving their feedback, and the designer(s) making the necessary changes to it before the final release.
I can see how it comes across that way though. Apologies to those who took it this way. I’m sure the beta team caught many other issues that were more central to the major focus of the mod.
Ultimately that statement was meant more to express my dissatisfaction over the tendency for game designers, in general, to only focus their attention on debugging the highlights of their game, but then leave everything else to the wayside.
4th November 2010
Really enjoyed this mod, one of the best I’ve played. Very inventive ideas, both in the puzzles and the overall story and the way it was told.
The puzzles weren’t extremely challenging, but I prefer that to them being overly frustrating. They did follow the Portal theme of not being too hard to execute once the solution was actually figured out. Also, since this is the first episode, I expect the later episodes to have much more challenging puzzles as the story becomes deeper.
I’m definitely looking forward to the rest. Definitely worth checking out.
While I didn’t experience any of these bugs mentioned by others, it is still disappointing to read about them. It’s obvious a lot of work went into the design of this mod, it’s a shame to see there wasn’t so much put into the execution and testing.