Benefactor (computer game)

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Benefactor is a computer game for the Amiga computer series, developed by the Swedish team Digital Illusions and published in 1994 by Psygnosis.

Benefactor is a mix between a puzzle game and a platform game. It has a similar concept as Psygnosis's earlier, very successful Lemmings series of games, but also adds its own ideas.

In Benefactor, you play a character called Ben E. Factor, who has resigned from the military to become an overall all-around good guy. Factor's mission is to save a group of "Merry Men", who have been kidnapped from their home planet and imprisoned over 60 levels.

The player controls Ben E. Factor directly, like a platform game character. Factor has to avoid all enemy creatures (hitting them would reduce health), and pull switches to extend the land, or many other things. Factor can find keys on the level to open the locks in the Merry Men's cells. When freed, a Merry Man automatically proceeds on a pre-set mission, with the aid of helping Factor to free the other Merry Men and complete the level.

In later levels, some of the Merry Men are "evil". "Evil" Merry Men, distinguished by their monochrome appearance, don't follow any preset pattern but instead walk blindly forwards, like the lemmings in the Lemmings games, without regard to dangers lying in their path. "Evil" Merry Men have to be turned into "good" Merry Men by dropping a bucket of paint over them before they can be rescued.

One of the good features of the game is also that there is no "lives" counter, you can just try unlimited times, which makes the game very addictive too.

Benefactor has support for data disks, but unfortunately, no data disks for it have ever been published.

[edit] Trivia

Keeping with Psygnosis's tradition of including references to earlier games, Benefactor includes a level called Lemmings? in which Ben E. Factor has to clear a path for twenty "evil" Merry Men marching blindly forwards across a series of pillars. This level is an obvious reference to the game Lemmings and even the music comes from that game. This is the only level where "evil" Merry Men can use the exit without first becoming "good".