[Disclaimer: I received a review key for The Escpae through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators. The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience. Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]
Systems: Windows
Release Date: September 16, 2025
Publisher: Space Race
Time Spent: ~38 Minutes
Not taking into account that I was unable to record any usable videos while playing The Escape, I have several things to say about this game. Some of my lack of enjoyment might be related to how the game ran on my computer, but I don't think all of the blame for the general poor performance lies with my laptop. But I cannot wholly rule out that possibility either, as I believe my laptop is on its way out; I did buy it five years ago, if I haven't already mentioned it. And while some of my issues with the game lie with its performance, the majority of my criticisms lie with the game itself.
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From what I was able to play, The Escape is a series of medium-sized, sparsely decorated interlocking escape rooms. You start off in one room with a door, and after solving how to operate the lever next to the door, you're able to leave. You then find yourself in a hallway with two large shutter-style doors on either end of the hallway, and another regular unlocked door. All that I was able to discover during my time playing were the four rooms and two hallways. Oftentimes, the puzzles required you to backrack to previous rooms after flipping the lever in any given room you're exploring
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My issue with the game is that it feels like a lot of it was either made up of existing assets, or assets were created and just reused haphazardly. For instance, you can move the lever in one room, but it's locked in another, and the game prompts you to find a crowbar. But the crowbar and all of the other items I found were all single-use items. For another lever, you're prompted to find an axe or a key. I've done plenty of in-person escape rooms, so I know that you're often unlocking one puzzle to acquire an item to unlock another puzzle. That's all that I felt I was doing here, except I didn't always know where the next puzzle was or where the "key" I had discovered was to be used.
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The other issue is that the game switches back and forth between Italian and English, sometimes within the same sentence, without rhyme or reason. I get that the developer, based on the Itch.io page for The Escape, is likely Italian, so the in-game text is also in Italian, and I managed to use the screen recording feature of Google Translate on my phone to get the gist of what I was supposed to find. I could understand if the player is not supposed to understand Italian, like they're a person who only speaks English and they find themselves in an Italian prison/escape room, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
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Lastly, the movement started getting really messed up after about 15 minutes. I genuinely don't know what was going on, and I'm sad that OBS wasn't able to record it, because describing it is going to be difficult. For most of the game, I was holding down the Left Shift key to run because there was a lot of space between rooms, the hallways were long, and I wasn't always sure if a switch in one room did something in the room I was in or a different room. I was starting to notice that my movement was slowing, not in a reduced frames per second way, but that my character was moving slower while I could still turn at a regular and constant speed. The 'bounce' of the camera, too, was becoming a lot more noticeable while trying to run. And I think that's where a lot of my nauseating feelings originated. A combination of the progressively slower and slower movement, the disconnect between what I was doing (pressing W to move and Left Shift to run), possibly the fact that you can't invert the y-axis, and the increased bouncing is ultimately what did me in.
And this was just from my first play attempt.
On several follow-up attempts, I had identical issues, although the slow-moving glitch/bug happened earlier than the 15-minute point, and I think my brain recognized what I was doing because I became nauseous in fewer than five minutes. I tried playing the game three more times, and the uninspired puzzles coupled with the nausea meant that I've yet to escape from the starting four rooms and two hallways. The Escape simply needs a lot more work for it to be fun and playable, but also feel like you're playing a finished product.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I've Searched the Eye
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