The Escapists (2015)

I was not expecting to get so much out of this game. I bought it for $3 on the Nintendo eShop and figured it would be one of those quick fun games I blast through between my longer "real" games. I ended up putting more time into it than such games as Link's Awakening and Super Mario Odyssey (though the numbers are conflated a bit because I spent a lot of time on the pause screen, and the Switch refuses to tell you exactly how long you spent on a game). And when I beat what I thought was the final prison, I found out there are 7 more prisons in the bonus content. Value galore.

I like the distinction someone on Steam made about this game: it's not a prison simulator; it's a puzzle game with a prison theme. If you're looking for the former, this may not be the game for you. If you like puzzle games, however, this could be right up your alley. It's almost like one of those escape rooms, but the puzzles are entirely environmental.

Essentially you have to break out of prison by either stealing keys, physically breaking out, knocking out all the guards, or some combination of the three. This makes it so most prisons have several ways they can be escaped. When you wake up on the first day, your job is to figure out the layout of the prison, collect items, and make an escape plan. Once you've gathered everything you need, you can execute your plan and see if it works.

I really liked how the game saves at the end of every day when you go to sleep. This made it so every day you had goals you wanted to achieve before saving, and you didn't lose too much if you got caught and had to reset to your last save. It actually felt a lot like Majora's Mask, where every day you get to plan out what you want to achieve before the clock resets.

This is one of those rare games that makes it onto my favourites list without being a 5 star game. Unfortunately, I can't give it a 5 star rating because of a few specific and annoying things.

First, I love puzzles, but I would have really appreciated more by way of tutorial. I spent a lot of time on Google, and I had a lot of moments of, "Oh, I could do that??" And yea, part of the fun is discovering all the different things you can do, but I was just so lost and overwhelmed at the beginning that I would have liked a little more help. There are phone booths that will give you tips, but they cost a lot of in-game money, and I didn't even know about them for the first probably ten hours.

Second, I didn't like how the character automatically fights back when inmates attack. I tried to never get on an inmates bad side, because when they dislike you, they randomly attack you several times a day, and because the character fights back automatically, you get in trouble for fighting. If an inmate attacks you while guards are around and you have contraband items on your person, they might get confiscated even though you didn't do anything.

And third, and this is very specific and might only be a problem on the Switch, grabbing your food from the cafeteria is the same button as attacking people, and I would often accidentally attack an inmate when trying to get my food. They would then hate me and attack me for the rest of the run. Inmates are really hard to appease once they hate you, because they refuse to talk to you, and you need to talk to them in order to make them like you again. This also made finishing jobs a pain, because you'll get the requested item, but then person who wanted the item might not let you talk to them for several days.

Controls were generally a bit of an issue for me, and this may just be because it was designed with point-and-click in mind, which doesn't always translate well to a controller. Still, it prevented me from fully enjoying the game, and certainly added to my playtime when a mistaken input would have negative consequences.

Overall though, I was really surprised how much I liked this game. I definitely recommend it, especially if you can get it on sale. I just spent the last month playing it, and I spent about $0.14 per hour of enjoyment I got out of it.

The Escapists is an 8-bit adventure game in which you play a prisoner who has to escape. You wake up in your cell and go through your daily routine as to not draw attention. You can exercise and browse the internet to get stronger or smarter. You can steal or buy items. You can help or attack people.

It's a pretty clever concept but it suffers from one tiny flaw - i have no idea what to do. There's a very very short tutorial but after that you're on your own without having concept like detectors explained to you. You have to guess what you can get away with, what items can be combined in crafting and what items can be used to what effect.

Early on i found a blueprint for paper mache. What the hell am i supposed to do with that? There isn't even some sort of hint system. Like with other adventure games and crossword puzzles you have to know the genre tropes and understand the designer's logic. If, like me, you're not into that this game isn't for you.

This is a really old game but I wanted to try it and it was in my Steam library so I thought, "Now's the time". Well... probably it just has not aged as well but for me it was a no thanks.

I did the tutorial prison and a few days into the first real prison and decided to just quit. The idea of going through a prisoner's life waiting for the opportunity to escape still sounds fun.

But controlling this game was not fun and felt kind on unintuitive. I also feel like the flow was too fast for me to ever really get into the groove of all the different systems at play. I guess I just did not get it.

I had a "mission" to get floss for another prisoner. So I got the floss and no matter how I clicked it did not "go" to them. I could not do a basic task even though I had all the parts.

I was not having much fun before that but once it got to the point where I realized even basic stuff was going to be a hassle I thought, this is not worth it.

I am curious if the sequel fixes any of this? Also, controller support.