I first saw The Escapists on a Twitch Live stream, I was only passing by, and saw that it had a rad style, with some decent elements, but I was busy and had to move on, Time passed on, I looked forward to playing it, and I finally got the chance to when at Eurogamer with Senshudo, and it was a blast, sure it was only a demo, and you were lead through how to complete it, but i enjoyed it.
Then I was able to play the Early Access game for myself, I couldn’t wait to escape from prison again. With the combination of interest I had from the stream, and then playing that demo, I was really looking forward to it. But the more and more I played, the less and less I was having fun.
Let’s talk about what I was enjoying with this early access title. Graphics and style. I loved the graphics and style of this game, it had brilliantly done pixel work, with a classic feel to the game. Everything was clear, items, inmates, guard, they all had very unique sprites. I never felt I had to look up what an item or sprite was, which is always a good sign. The sound design, this felt like it had a very 'classic' influence, a lot like the graphical style. Noises were obvious and you could tell when you were doing something wrong or right, but like a lot of other classics, were quite repetitive and sometimes made no sense. For example, picking up some laundry - beep, putting laundry in the machine - different beep. But while I do complain about this repetitive nature of the sound design, I can’t fault them for it as it works well with the style they are going for.
Q and E, you will learn to love these buttons.
I feel I haven’t mentioned much about the gameplay yet, but I feel this is an odd topic to talk about. Much like the sound, the gameplay is fairly repetitive and became almost boring after a few hours. Then it struck me, this is a prison escape sim. This is literally what prison is like. Every day you have the same schedule, if you compare it to this, it's actually the perfect game. But this is an escape sim, and escaping is when the game gets interesting.
From my experiences with the game at Eurogamer and playing early access, I found a few different ways to escape, each one requiring you to avoid various duties around the prison, which raise suspicion with guards. However, I won’t go into too much detail as I want to any avoid spoilers for anyone who may want to play this. Let’s just say it was a challenge, and a fun challenge at that, if repetitive. One thing I must praise them for though is zero hand holding throughout the entirety of my playtime. Everything I was doing in that game, was of my own accord, and that is what I feel is important in a game and makes something genuinely fun.
Only the finest for these inmates, but sometimes you have to share a seat.
Overall I would say to people that this is a very niche game that could really do with a few tweaks to lower some of the repetitive gameplay. But if you enjoy a sim style game, with some rad pixel graphics, definitely check it out. But for those unsure, definitely wait until full release to see if they fix these player unfriendly features.