The Escapists Review

Posted on 3rd March 201513th March 2015 by

Developer Mouldy Toof Studios

Publisher Team 17

Platform XboxOne & PC

Release Date Out Now
Reviewed by Cian Crowdy on Xbox One.

The Escapist was an innovative and creative little idea that began as a small crowd funded project and has since gone on to grow into a fully developed game. Now in association with the ID@Xbox program it has arrived on XboxOne.

As you might imagine from the title the game involves escaping, this time from prison using your wit and crafting abilities. This retro looking title has a certain esthetic appeal but it is the longevity offered by the six levels of difficulty and crafting system that really sets it apart.

As mentioned the idea is to escape from prison and as you might image it can be rather difficult at first. In order to survive prison you will have to perform favours to earn cash which in turn can be used to buy contraband such as crowbars or pickaxes. Favours can range from beating up other inmates, stealing from the desks in their rooms, or even creating a distraction at Dinner. Accepting or denying these favours can gradually have an impact on how smooth your escape will turn out. If you decide to beat up other inmates and guards you will find yourself becoming the target later in the game.

Some inmates with have icons above their head, this means that they will have items to purchase. These items change from time to time so do keep checking back as you might be able to find something rare, or find that last piece to create an item.

When you do enough favours and gain enough respect from other inmates you can take over the prison, it’s a level I haven’t managed to reach yet but I am looking forward to giving that a go later on.

The crafting system in The Escapist may seem daunting at first with ”what do I do with toothpaste and duct tape?” but luckily there is a “tip machine” set up in each level that offers recipes to help.

If you are still stumped on how to create what you need there is a wiki guide available, but only use it if you are in a tight spot as figuring out how to craft what you need is half the appeal. This wiki will help if you want to try to escape in several different ways from the same prison in order to increase your score on the leader board.

Escaping from prison, choose to open a vent in your own room, climb to the roof and drop to the fence and cut your way out, or recreate The Great Escape and tunnel your way out from under your own desk.

Alternatives include stealing cutlery from the canteen to tunnel or fashion a cutting devise, or why not use molding putty to copy a key and walk out.

Just remember no matter what you choose, hide your evidence. If you get caught trying to escape you get banged up in solitary for three days and all your work and contraband items will be taken away.

The contraband is distinguishable by its red name. If you get caught at all everything is confiscated. The higher difficulty levels have a contraband detector, which will set off an alarm if you walk through it and the guards will attack you which will cause a lockdown. If you are able to escape from the guards you can hide in lockers until the heat/lockdown ends

As the levels get harder your forms of escape become more detailed, you may have to dig under an electric fence just to come out on the other side of a great wall which you will have to climb using that rope you had bought or crafted earlier. Another way to escape is to brute force it and simply attack enough guards with a high enough ferocity that they give up and just let you go.

The Escapist does have an RPG style to it, you can upgrade your attributes including Strength, Speed and intellect. The Speed and Strength will assist you in fights and increase your overall health to get up these attributes you will need to spend time in the exercise area pumping iron. Intellect will help craft certain items and you can gain this by reading books or browsing the Internet on a computer.

Ten prison jobs are available to help you earn you some vital escape funds. These range from Laundry, Janitor, Mail Man, Metal Shop, Kitchen, Wood Work, Tailor, Deliveries, Gardener and Library work. Each job choice changes depending on which prison you are in. With the jobs you get access to different keys which allow you to get to different locations that may be blocked otherwise.

If you don’t like the job that you have or want another you can check the jobs board to see what jobs are available. If you need to gain access to a certain room you will notice that a certain job is linked to that specific red key. If someone else has that job you might need to track them down and knock them out so they get fired and you can apply for that job to plan your escape.

The escapist is a lot of fun to just jump in a mess around with while at the same time offering those more serious the option of plotting complex prison breaks. The difficulty across the board from the low level security of Center perks to the maximum security level of HMP Irongate means there is enough challenge for everyone.