You can also converse with inhabitants and do favors like giving beatdowns for cash, or call upon favors yourself.Ĭonversely, you can also be on the receiving end of a beatdown or get fired from your cush job. Nearly all of these have a small minigame of sorts, and boost your stats just like a classic NES Final Fantasy would. The top portion of the screen basically functions as a ticker, showing you what activities you are expected to attend, including lunch, exercise time, and any and all job requirements. Guard and prisoner routines are entirely different, there are more people to worry about, the vents aren’t automatically open like they were in the intro, and so on. It feels really easy at first, until you enter the first real stage and realize that pure entropy is the name of the game.
The tutorial is basically an elaborate ruse, providing an interactive step-by-step guide on how to break out of the intro lockup. You won’t find a party with varying sets of skills though - you’ll have to escape all on your own, using the tools found within the prison and nothing more. Using said menus you can pick up new gadgets, combine and craft, and check your statline. It’s a puzzle game, plain and simple, with old school JRPG-like menus to boot. Whether you’re Shawshanking it or divining an elaborate Michael Scofield-esque Prison Break scheme, the prison is your oyster, as the game is very open-ended in nature. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to escape from prison by any means necessary.
If you’ve ever seen the intro to Kenan & Kel, that’s basically how Escapists works. Kenan: Kel, I’m going to need some chicken wire, some beeswax, a rooster, a few rolls of toilet paper, and a 5-Iron.