The Escapists (Xbox One)

The Escapists released in 2015 and is a pixelated, prison break-out, strategy game. Can you break out of all the increasingly difficult prisons?

I'll be the first to say it, I'm sick of current game developers releasing games with 8 bit graphics. I get it's where games started and it's nostalgic, but what's the point of having amazing capabilities if they're just gonna stay in the 80s? That being said, it completely works for The Escapists. Considering its whole purpose is to break out of prisons, it has such a lighthearted tone. It's so bright and colourful, it has fantastic music that you'll have a joy listening to and it's really fun.

It can be quite overwhelming at first, there's so many possibilities to break out of each prison and your hand is never held. You're able to craft equipment to help you break out, but you have to experiment to find out how to make specific items. You can create tools to help you break out, shovels, pickaxes and weapons to fight off guards and inmates.

You can become friends with inmates and get guards on your good side. It's always good to keep everyone friendly so they don't constantly try to fight you, it can be annoying. You can do favours for the inmates and receive money and friendship. Some inmates are also merchants and sell you useful items, you can also loot sells to get them for free.

While you're planning your escape, you have a schedule you have to keep up with so the guards don't come looking for you. This includes roll calls, dinner times, exercise periods and shower time. You can upgrade your intelligence, strength and speed stats to make you better in fights, move faster and make more rare items. Every prison also has jobs for you to do, there are different jobs in different prisons too. You can do laundry, make clothes, deliver mail amongst others.

There are six total prisons to break out of, each prison has a unique layout and its own schedule so you never feel like you're doing the same thing over and over (besides when you're getting your stats up). Each prison also has obstacles you need to deal with, some have cameras in inmates' cells so you can't just get all your gear from looting them, some have Metal detectors so you can't always carry contraband. You can never get used to something you're comfortable with, because it may be difficult to reciprocate in the next prison. So your play style changes each prison.

If you start a fight with a guard and lose, or steal something from a guard and they wake up, you're sent to solitary, which skips three days. You can steal keys from guards, and make a copy of their key. You must give the key back to the incapacitated guard before the regain consciousness, or it's straight to solitary! You're able to customise your prisoner and change your name, same goes for other prisoners. A few times, some prisoners had the same name, which was annoying when you had a favour to do with a certain inmate.

As all the prisons are different, your escapes are different. Thankfully there are many ways out, I had a number of different escapes, but some prisons have only one way out. I've dig tunnels, smashed through walls and even ran through the front door. There's many ways to get freedom.

The Escapists is an incredibly fun game, it has a tonne of replayability and is an fantastic experience. The sequel has recently released and I'll soon be getting my orange jumpsuit back on!

7/10