The first thing I did every morning was beat the shit out of Simon. Back on my first day in prison—for no reason, mind you—Simon felt it necessary to rough me up. Over the next few days I lifted weights to boost my strength and figured out how to fashion a bludgeoning instrument out of an old sock and a bar of soap. From then on, every morning before or during roll call, I would locate Simon and hit him until he didn’t move anymore before calmly returning my hand-crafted beat sock to my desk (read: storage locker) in my room. Then, I would go to Simon’s room and either steal or flush all of contents of his desk down the toilet. One time I beat him up in the middle of the day, which caused him to get fired from his in-prison job mailing letters, which I then assumed the next day, which was glorious. At the time, I wasn’t worried about escape; I was consumed with recreationally abusing Simon.
Eventually, however, I began to agonize over escaping. The game, after all, is called The Escapists and you’re ostensibly supposed to freely form your objectives around breaking out of prison. This may not seem obvious in a game seemingly consumed by routine and order.
You wake up to roll call, where you stand in a vague line in front of prison guards while they insult you and decide whose bunk is getting tossed that day. From there it’s time for breakfast, steadfastly disguised as a chance to regain health or energy lost from the morning’s (potential) beatings. From there the schedule fluctuates, but you can be assured the remainder of the day will include exercise time, job time, two more square meals, and a generous amount of free time to do whatever you please. It’s important to remember, however, that just because you’re supposed to do these things, you don’t actually have to do any of them.
Still, outside of the violent underpinnings that defined my relationship with Simon, I was a model prisoner. In my free time I read the Internet and boosted my intelligence stat by looking at pictures of cats. I ran the treadmill at the gym, which boosted my speed, and lifted weights, which increased my strength. I even showed up for work every day, calmly removing laundry from hampers before washing uniforms and returning those uniforms, neatly pressed, to a clean clothes pile. I did favors for people, like acquiring my boy Darren a new watch or stealing a razor blade of questionable necessity for this guy Logan. Sometimes I’d get into a scuffle with another inmate—certain favors involve stealing from others, making these sorts of confrontations inevitable—but, generally, I prided myself as an ideal inmate.
I was further impressed by the amount of potential action I was discovering every day. Every now and then I’d punch out a prison guard and steal one of his color-coded keys. The first time I did this I was instantly busted in ten seconds and thrown in solitary for three days. All of my contraband was collected and I was left with nothing of reasonable importance. Eventually I figured out that I could make some putty by crafting together talcum powder and toothpaste. This let me make a mold of the key. I would then combine that with molten plastic (made by crafting a lighter alongside a plastic comb), which effectively duplicated the guard’s key. Rather than steal the key, I made a copy and returned the original to the passed-out guard’s pocket. With enough trial-and-error, I’d figure out who had what color-coded keys and slowly planned my cascading escape.
It never worked out. I got so strong I was punching out inmates and guards automatically upon being attacked. Simon, when he wasn’t a crippled mess, would always start some shit at breakfast and cause a massive fight. Casualties of the brawl arrived in the form of other inmates and usually prison guards, which was a problem because if you down more than one guard, the prison goes on total lockdown. When you’re inevitably caught, you’re thrown in solitary for three days. This carries the double penalty of not saving your game, which can only be done at night on a normal day. Even if I took no direct aggressive action, I couldn’t get through a day without getting attacked and automatically attacking other inmates and guards, which always issued a call for lockdown. All of my contraband was always confiscated, and I was stuck in a never ending loop of pain and destruction. Time was being wasted.
Was I the maker of my own doom or just a byproduct of the system? There’s interesting social commentary there, but it’s lost in the light of how The Escapists functions. My endlessly repeating scenario seemed to be unavoidable, and while I eventually started over and found another way to escape (similar to the tunneling and dirt disposal methods employed by Andy Dufresne) I was disappointed that The Escapists’ spiraling systems appeared to poison hours of time I invested. In a way that’s fine, I’m prepared to fail repeatedly until I learn my lesson, but this didn’t feel like it was my fault. I couldn’t escape my fate, which seemed to run counter to The Escapists’ stated objectives.
This is unfortunate because The Escapists really is a beautiful machine. There are so many nefarious items to craft, an incredible amount of interplay between prisoners, guards, and the barriers between all of them that makes The Escapists feel like a delightful hybrid between sandbox games and puzzlers. It’s like Bully with more creative freedom (and the world certainly is in need of more games like Rockstar’s secret-best project). There are actually a whole host of prisons with more complex obstacles and arcane objectives than the opening enclosure of Center Parks, but good luck summoning the resolve to find your way through each and every one. It’s too arcane, too oppressive, and too unfriendly to experimentation.
It’s just too easy to get buried under waves of failure and tedium. Either you’re stuck in the machine and a slave to routine, or your carefully arranged plans are laid to waste by a guard walking in on you and domino’ing an entire prison riot. This can feel incredibly demoralizing, and, at least on my end, further savaged by my inability not to get thrown in solitary literally every day. Make no mistake, there is a massive feeling of earned elation when it all actually works out, but that’s assuming you have the internal gusto to see it through to completion.
What I liked better were the little things; ignoring roll call and sifting through everyone’s desks, or finally finding a cup so I could dump molten chocolate on Simon’s stupid face. I spent all my money at the phone booth, as that was the only way I could learn what sort of insane items to craft. Getting fired from my job was great just so I could go lift weights while wearing a cop uniform and carrying a razor blade comb just in case anyone tried to mess with me. I had a good life going for myself, and then the game, despite its honest intentions, always seemed to get in the way. What good are a bunch of variables if they aren’t especially practiced at working together?
Even in failure, The Escapists is more interesting than 75% of the games that make their way to retail. There really is nothing quite like it, a facet betrayed by its retro aesthetic, twitchy nature, and latent degrees of intense specialization. I loved The Escapists best as an anecdote generator, a list of goodies I described with great affection when detailing my escapades to some of my friends. I didn’t have to tell them the truth, they’ll never play it anyway, but I do have to tell you, reader; The Escapists wants so badly to be great, and it’s a damn shame that it’s not.
