Breaking Out From Behind Bars In The Escapists

The prison escape, such a popular centrepiece within the film industry, hasn’t quite managed to find a place within video games so far. Coming to PC some time this year, The Escapists looks set to change that, giving you fully functioning prisons to cut your escape planning teeth on.

Immediately, you’re thrown into the prison routine, working to a strict schedule that has you reporting to an early roll call, replete with a little scuffle between some guards and prisoners to keep them in line, before heading off to your prison job.

In this case, my character, who I named Steve, was assigned laundry duty. A simple and menial job of taking dirty clothes from one basket, adding them to my inventory, putting them into the line of washing machines and then dropping them into the clean basket.

For those looking at the game’s simple 2D graphics and wishing for Pokémon battles, it’s really down to the common reasoning behind indies using pixel art. When I mentioned the Pokémon comparison to Chris Davis, the game’s creator, he replied, “You’re the third person that’s said that! It’s because I’m just not that good at art, so I keep it simple, and you can’t get much simpler than this.”

After my shift in the laundry room, it’s on to the next part of the prison schedule, heading off to get food, working out in the gym and then taking a communal shower, during which I wandered around and tried to talk to my fellow prisoners (I would probably not last very long in a real prison). The day ended with my being allowed to enjoy some free time in the evening before being sent back to my cell for lights out.

“You spend the day doing your routine… well, you don’t have to; you can skip them, but you’ll get the guards after you. You’ll spend the day crafting and collecting things you might need later or altering your friendships and relationships with other cellmates to your benefit.”

It’s as the lights go out that my escape attempt starts, as I drag the sheet from my prison bed and tie it up over the bars for a little privacy. Taking a shovel out of my desk, I start to dig a hole in the floor, before dropping down and trying to get my tunnel underway.

Just as in the classic Great Escape, this gives me two problems. I need wood to support the tunnel every few meters and I’m filling my inventory with a lot of dirt, when I’m not needlessly blunting my spade against rocks. Thankfully, Chris cuts in to point me in the direction of some supplies of wood in the desk and the ability to flush dirt down the toilet, when I’d been planning on some kind of gardening projects in the yard.

The only real problem I encountered during my time with the game was that this was a rather curtailed and short taster of a greater whole. For the purposes of keeping it as a manageable demo, the daily routine was compressed into what felt like just a few minutes, keeping me rushing from one place to the next.

“This demo is all sped up, and it’s going to be a lot slower paced for the proper game,” Chris clarified when I asked him about the game time for a prison. “I’m hoping it’s going to be like you can sit down and think ‘Alright, I’m going to get out of here’ and maybe do it in one go? I don’t want it to be too long and drawn out… unless… I’m still not sure!”

Either way, the final game won’t be as hurried, you’ll also have to be more careful in executing your escape. Hanging up a sheet to block out your cell will start to attract attention, for example, as will deviating from the daily schedule. Thankfully, digging a tunnel is just one of many escape possibilities.

“Basically, I just watched every prison break film I could find and took all the ideas!” Chris said. “The only one that’s really featured in this demo is digging, but there’ll be scaling fences, jumping in the garbage truck, but there’ll be several ways to get out. There’s a lot of random elements though, so it depends on that particular playthrough what might be easier to do each time.”

It will also come down to which prison it is that you’re trying to escape from. In the game there will be several bespoke prisons to try and break out of, even some P.O.W camps, which should make a for an interesting change of pace.

“I’ll have to get a little prison editor in the game, so that people can design their own prisons to escape from. Nothing like on that scale,” Chris said, pointing to a stand for Prison Architect, a game which is practically the opposite to The Escapists, “but a little prison editor would be good.”

However, this is just one point in a development that feels like it still has a long way to go. There’s some rough edges and quirks to the way in which you dig, for example, that could be quite time consuming and tedious as it takes multiple actions to actually clear a square of dirt, only to discover that it’s a rock and have to head in a different direction. Similarly, some of the repetition from the menial prison job could be reduced.

“Because the routine of prison life is a bit of a grind,” Chris explained, “I tried to put in the characters saying random banter, which I’ve just made really silly so there’s something to amuse you while you’re doing the boring stuff.”

“I’ve not put conversations in it yet, so at the moment, in the free periods, they’ll just say random things like they’re talking to themselves. I’m hoping to get it so that it looks like they’re conversing with others.”

Even with the quirks of the sped up demo at Rezzed and the rough edges in certain parts of the game, The Escapists is certainly showing a lot of promise, bringing that classic film genre to videogames.