United Heist: Facility Zero Puts One Thief in the Bunker and One Poor Bastard on the Radio
United Heist: Facility Zero is out now for €6.99, and the idea is stupidly simple: two thieves, one secret bunker, one of you goes inside and the other stays behind in an observation office. Your only real lifeline is a walkie-talkie and your combined ability to explain what the fuck you're looking at.
It launched on September 17 and immediately caught my attention because this isn't another co-op heist where both players are basically doing the same job in different pants.
Facility Zero splits you up.
One player physically infiltrates the bunker and deals with what's inside. The other sits in the observation office with information and systems the infiltrator doesn't have. You need each other to solve the puzzles and get through the facility.
The developer estimates about 5-7 hours for the whole thing. That's their estimate, mind you. The game has barely been out long enough for everyone to find the toilets, so there isn't enough independent evidence yet to confirm that or tell you whether those five to seven hours are brilliant.
There are only a handful of Steam reviews at the moment.
So no, I'm not going to review it.
But I do want to talk about that setup because there's something rather clever hiding in it.
Two people, one job and apparently no shared understanding of what “the weird symbol” means. Head into CRIMENET’s Heist Games coverage for more ways to discover that organised crime is mostly badly organised.
The heist depends on your ability to describe a fucking square
There is one bit of the classic heist fantasy I've always liked.
You've got the person actually inside the building, creeping around somewhere they absolutely shouldn't be, while someone else is sitting safely behind six monitors going:
"Wait."
"What?"
"Guard."
"WHERE?"
That's Facility Zero.
Except instead of merely using that relationship as flavour, it appears to be the game.
The infiltrator sees things the operator doesn't. The operator has information the infiltrator doesn't. So the recurring job isn't shooting guards, carrying bags or drilling something for 300 seconds while Dallas screams about a thermal drill.
It's talking.
And that is potentially far more dangerous.
Because you just know what happens the moment a puzzle contains four symbols.
"Which one?"
"The weird one."
"They're all weird."
"The one that looks like an H."
"There are three H's."
"No, not an actual H."
Police arrive three hours later. Both suspects are still arguing about typography.
That's the bit I find interesting here. Facility Zero has taken this massive videogame concept of THE HEIST and zoomed all the way in on one very specific relationship: the burglar in the building and the voice in his ear.
There doesn't appear to be some enormous PAYDAY-shaped criminal playground underneath it. No evidence so far of elaborate loadouts, getaway cars, a giant loot economy or forty-seven different ways to murder a security guard with kitchen equipment.
You communicate. You interpret what the other person is telling you. You solve the problem. You move deeper into the bunker.
It's basically an escape room wearing a balaclava.
And I'm completely fine with that.
Want the version where communication eventually gives way to guns, drills and bags containing enough cash to require spinal surgery? Dive into CRIMENET’s PAYDAY coverage and continue your criminal education.
It is actually a heist, though
I was slightly suspicious of the name at first because heist is one of those words games can slap on almost anything.
Put a vault in the background, call somebody a thief and suddenly Tetris is organised crime.
Facility Zero does seem to earn it.
You're thieves infiltrating a protected location, and the separation between infiltrator and operator isn't just there because co-op games need a gimmick. It creates an actual heist relationship. One person is physically exposed inside the facility. The other has the overview and information needed to get them through it.
I really like that idea.
Most co-op games solve teamwork by giving you another person with another gun. Congratulations, you now have twice the bullets.
Facility Zero makes the second player valuable because they know things.
That's much more interesting.
It also means the biggest threat inside this supposedly secret, presumably very secure bunker may eventually turn out to be Kevin's inability to distinguish left from the other left.
There has already been a fair bit of tinkering during the pre-release period. Developer updates mention changes to hints, lighting, item handling, performance and some of the puzzles. There's also a hint system involving collectible coins for when the criminal mastermind operation has reached the point where two grown adults have been staring at the same generator for fifteen minutes.
At which point, yes.
Buy the hint.
Pride has already left the building.
Facility Zero is only one strange little corner of videogame criminality. Explore CRIMENET’s Crime Games hub for more games that let you solve life's problems from the legally incorrect side.
The big question is whether this survives five hours of friendship
And that's the thing we can't answer yet.
The whole idea sounds good because asymmetric information can create those lovely moments where two people suddenly understand what the other is seeing and everything clicks.
It can also create this:
"Press the red button."
"There isn't a red button."
"Yes there is."
"I'm looking at it."
"SO AM I."
That's a very thin line between cooperative puzzle solving and divorce mediation.
Facility Zero lives on that line.
If the puzzles keep finding clever ways to make both roles useful, this could be a cracking little co-op heist. If one person eventually becomes the designated Human PDF Reader while the other gets to do all the interesting burglary, that's obviously a different story.
We simply don't know yet.
We also don't know whether the later puzzles hold up, how much fun it is to swap roles and go through again, whether the developer's 5–7 hour estimate matches reality, or whether any technical nastiness is waiting deeper inside the bunker.
Those are review questions.
This isn't one.
Right now, United Heist: Facility Zero is a €6.99 two-player puzzle heist built around a genuinely good criminal idea: put one thief somewhere they shouldn't be, give the other thief the information they desperately need, then separate them.
No machine-gun orchestra. No mountain of duffel bags. No getaway Lamborghini crashing through seventeen bollards because somebody thought stealth meant "don't leave witnesses."
Just two criminals trying to pull off a job while each possesses half the answer.
Which, thinking about it, may be the most realistic heist mechanic of all.
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