The Escape Demo

Developing a video game is definitely not an easy task, since it requires a multitude of talents, as well as a lot of time and dedication. Indie productions may be recognizable from a mile away, but that doesn’t mean they are any less good than a triple-A mammoths developed by huge studios. However, these small developers usually aim for simple, yet original and catchy ideas, such as ingenious platformers, or crude sandbox games like Minecraft.

The Escape’s developer had other plans, though, because this first-person shooter intends to blend atmosphere, a pretentious story and solid gameplay mechanics into the same pot. Unfortunately, this was a huge stretch for an individual production, because none of the components click together and you are left with a badly designed mess that is barely playable.

You can deduce the background story from the game’s description, since otherwise you would probably believe it had none. Hence, you are supposed to rescue a Jewish girl by the name of Lavana, who’s being detained in a ghetto by the Nazis during the second World War. The action takes place somewhere in Ukraine and your main goal is to break into the castle(?) where Lavana is held captive.

Although one can probably overlook the poor graphics under the right circumstances, it is far more difficult to ignore the impossible gameplay mechanics. For starters, the enemies can see and shoot you from any distance, as long as you enter their line of sight. Secondly, you have to shoot them for about ten seconds in order to kill them, even if every bullet goes into their unprotected head. Then there’s the problem of ammo, because you run out of it after you kill one enemy and it is incredibly hard to find more.

This would be considered difficult if you were able to conserve ammunition by taking clean shots, but since you cannot do so, it’s just bad design. Moreover, you cannot switch to another weapon or use a knife/bat, which means that you are practically useless after the bullets run out. Stealth is not an option because of the poor level design, although it would be impossible anyway, considering the fact that the enemies are probably T-1000s and they can immediately spot you all the way from Berlin.

To top things off, the game is badly optimized as well, just to make the experience that much more annoying and pointless. Thus, it would be wise not to let The Escape stain your hard disk's platter, regardless of how curious you are about it and how bored you might be one afternoon.