Game EXP: Escape First 2 (NS)

 

Escape First 2

Systems: Windows, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Nintendo Switch

Original Release Date: June 20, 2019

Publisher: OnSkull Games

Developer: OnSkull Games

Escape First 2 is the third escape room game that we have played by OnSkull Games on the Nintendo Switch, although it is the second in the Escape First series, with Escape First 3 being the first game we played and you can read about the first Escape First here.  This is somewhat important context only because there was one escape room here of the three that was reminiscent of the one we really did not like in Escape First 3, so it put us in the right headspace in order to be able to enjoy the setting and puzzles.  Like the other games in the series, Escape First 2 is made up of three individual escape rooms that can be played in any order.  In-game they are presented as old and weathered movie posters from the 80s.  The three rooms are titled, "The Psycho Circus 2," "Escape Room Factory," and "The Torture Chamber."  I really enjoyed this presentation over the other two games with the first being simple box and icon titles, and the third being vague moody images of the buildings where the escape rooms took place without any titles.  If OnSkull Games were to make an Escape First 4, I would love them to go back to this style in Escape First 2.

First off though, I wanted to mention something about the controls in the game.  In the first Escape First, you could invert the y-axis, which you probably know by now is my preferred camera control option in first-person video games.  For whatever reason, this option was now offered in Escape First 2 and I cannot think of why that choice was removed.  I did force myself to learn to play with an uninverted-y-axis but it felt pretty awkward for more than half of "The Psycho Circus 2" and I am sure that Conklederp did not appreciate the semi-erratic movements of the camera in helping with her feeling slightly motion-sick.

As for the individual rooms, again I will give our impressions of each room, in the order we played them, while not going into any specific solutions to any of the puzzles.

The Psycho Circus 2

While this is a sequel of sorts to the first escape room in Escape First, there was not anything here that required the player to have already played that first game or "The Psycho Circus" room, it nearly provided an out-of-game explanation as to why the player is back in another circus setting.  So you can just jump right into this room and not be missing anything.

This room itself was quite a jump up from the first "Psycho Circus" in that you played in more than one room.  Conklederp and I felt a bit dumb at first nearly failing to figure out the first puzzle, but in my defense, when I entered the code into the number pad, I did get the correct "bling!" sound effect, which I took to mean that the code I had entered was correct, but the box it was attached to would not open.  We ended up figuring out that the code I had entered was in fact not correct and when I entered the correct code, there was an additional clicking sound, presumably of the box unlocking.

There was another puzzle that we thought we had figured out, but the locking mechanism was a directional lock, where the input is like a directional pad with a center button to complete your input.  What confused us about this lock specifically was that we thought we had entered the correct sequence, but instead of five inputs needed you were supposed to enter nine.  I cannot say if the blame on not knowing how many inputs to enter was on us or the lack of direction from the game, but we did have to look up a walkthrough to finally see that the solution we had spent the last 25 minutes figuring out was incomplete.

"The Psycho Circus 2" ended up being the first room that we did not finish in the requisite amount of time.  You are given 60 minutes and as the clock ticked down in the last room surrounded by puzzles that we just came across, we were convinced that the game was going to black-screen us and say that we failed.  Or I was really worried that a clown was going to come sprinting from the first room and straight into us, but since there had been no character animations in any of the other games, I thought that this would be out of character for the series.  No.  Instead the timer continued counting down past zero, so when we finished our time was -13:-17, or 13 minutes and 17 seconds past the 60 minute timer (or 73 minutes and 17 seconds).  So we really appreciated that the game did not end forcing us to replay through the earlier puzzles, although we did have the solutions so it would not have taken us too long.

"The Torture Room"

We did this room next out of fear that it was going to be similar to one of the rooms from Escape First 3 that we did not like, in that it played more like a video game than an escape room that you could physically go to, which is what this ended up being.  But constructed in a much better and more escape room-like way.

What I mean by this played more like a video game was that there would be puzzles that required you to interact with the environment and objects in ways that you could never do in-person, or at least in the escape rooms that we have done.  Actions like setting a tapestry on fire to reveal a fresco that gives a clue to a puzzle, or cutting a rope holding a heavyweight to break through a section of floor revealing a hidden passage.  While very cool concepts, they are not things that you would find in an escape room.  So having this mindset going into "The Torture Room" helped a lot as far as what we were expecting and how we approached the puzzles.

We did ask for a couple of hints during this puzzle and only looked up a walkthrough out of fear that we missed a clue or that a physical clue might have clipped through the floor (which we have seen in the past, but not to the extent that it broke the game).  I think a number of our troubles stem from the translation of escape room-type puzzles into a video game setting, where you lose a certain amount of tactile information that you would normally be able to receive by being in the room with puzzles, clues, and other surrounding objects.  For instance, there was an object we received after completing a puzzle, but it was a little difficult to tell what the object actually was.  We ended up determining that it was a wadded-up rag, and once we knew what it was, we knew exactly where to go to use it.

As with "The Psycho Circus 2," we ran over time on this one as well, again by about 15 or so minutes even with the starting time being 90 minutes.  One thing I noticed about this room compared to a lot of the others we have done, was that there were a number of rooms with their own puzzles separated by a couple of corridors.  All of the other rooms had puzzles that you had to solve in order, but this one had a few puzzles that could be solved at the same time if you were playing this as a multiplayer game (although multiplayer is not compatible on the Switch port).  This allowed Conklederp to work out a logic puzzle (using whiteboard dungeon tiles and dry erase marker because we did not have pens/pencils and paper handy like normal people).

Despite "The Torture Room" feeling more like a video game with some escape room-type puzzles, I think both Conklederp and I were surprised by how much we enjoyed this room.  One critique was that the room description said that "...hearing screams from the room next door..." I was expecting there to be more ambient background sounds befitting of a dungeon and torture chamber, but there was only a low-drone ambient music-esque tone and the occasional sound effect associated with dropping items and solving puzzles.  The puzzles themselves were somewhat fitting to the setting, and they themselves were a lot of fun to solve, which is what all escape rooms should strive to do in the end.

"Escape Room Factory"

This room was more of a combination of classical escape room puzzles and more video game-like mechanics where you would use clues from around the room to generate a four-digit code to unlock a box, and use an object to physically break another to open another locked box.  Because of the title, I was hoping to be able to explore and solve puzzles behind the scenes in an escape room, maybe hearing things going on in the main room while you are solving puzzles behind the scenes.  Sadly, expectations were not met on that level as the entirety of the room is played out while in a bathroom with no visible entrances or exits.

I will mention one aspect of a puzzle because I genuinely lol'd.  There was a set of keys sitting atop a pipe, but at the time, there was no visible keyhole that needed unlocking.  But since the keys were out in the open, I thought it best to at least grab them and then put them someplace where I would remember them and possibly place other objects that I might use later since there is no inventory management in these games.  So I went over to the keys, grabbed them, but they immediately fell down into the pipe.  I could not help but laugh because there was an escape room we did with my sister The Kid, and friends Folly and Himo a few years ago where we nearly lost a key in a similar way that we needed to fish out with a fishing pole; there was another escape room that required us to use a fishing pole to pull keys out of jacket pockets across a room (which was a horrible design because once the keys fell on the floor, there was no way to pick them up).

I can only think of two things in this room that I took issues with.  The first was more from a perspective and lighting that would not have been an issue if this was an in-person escape room.  There was a switch that I flipped when I thought it was interacting with something else in the room.  The lighting of the object was too dark to tell that what I clicked was actually below what I thought I was clicking, and it did not help that what I thought I was clicking you could also interact with, but I did not have the correct object yet.  The second issue was that there was a puzzle that required the player to perform a mathematical equation in a way that was not written out correctly: "x=x+x/3+1"

While this equation can be solved, the answer being x=-6 is not an answer that works in the puzzle and not how the multiple answers needed to solve the puzzle can be completed.  After consulting a walkthrough, part of the solution was to round up your answers, of which there is no indication that you are allowed to round up/down answers especially since some of the possible answers do come out to whole numbers.  Again, the problem I have here goes back to my stance that an escape room should give the players everything they need to solve the puzzles and that the players should not have to bring in any outside knowledge.  Sure simple addition/subtraction/division/multiplication might be required in some instances, but this equation and the needed answers should have been presented differently.

"Escape Room Factory" was the only one of the three rooms that we managed to complete in fewer than the 60 allotted minutes, I think within 5 minutes.  The math puzzle above really ate at our time because I felt that I was close to solving the puzzle, but in the end, we caved and used the walkthrough.

After completing all three of the stages, Conklederp and I were mostly happy with the escape rooms included in this collection.  We appreciated that when we ran out of time on the first two rooms that we were allowed to continue and that the timer began counting into the negative because having to start over would have been doable, but significantly less fun.  And even with the issues mentioned above with puzzles deviating from how we felt escape room puzzles should be constructed and presented to the players, we thankfully and unashamedly used walkthroughs when the in-game hint system failed to be as specific as we needed it to in order to continue.  And for the most part, the rooms here did provide a lot of fun, which should be the goal of escape rooms.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
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