A Wildly Ambitious Hub for Everything Related to Escape Rooms
As someone who loves escape rooms – both real world and in video games – I’m surprised at how little the two overlap. I’m yet to come across a video game that feels like a bricks and mortar escape room. The video game versions tend to be sprawling, full of story, magical effects or high-tech computer systems. They rarely feel like you’ve been shuffled into a single room, worn from use, claustrophobic and slightly grotty. Sometimes, I want a slightly bored chap called Jayden to tell me the rules and then push me through the door.
Escape Simulator is the first game, at least that I’ve played, that captures the spirit of a real escape room. Okay, you don’t get the flaking paint or Jayden, but you DO get a single space with an exit door. Everything is tactile and can be picked up. The ‘Simulator’ in the title is well-earned: this feels like I have rocked up to a series of escape rooms yet not had to pay an unholy amount of money to try them all.
Original, Extra, Versus, DLC, Community – oh my!
I was actually a little overwhelmed when I first booted up Escape Simulator. There are a LOT of ways to play, with Original, Versus, Extra, DLC and Community escape rooms all available from the main menu. The best approach is the most obvious: start with the Tutorial, and let it guide you from there.
Even in the Tutorial, Escape Simulator gives you a surprising amount of freedom – perhaps too much, I would argue. You can pick up almost everything in a room and stash it in your inventory, which runs across the bottom of the screen and is accessible with an RB or LB. From there, each item can be inspected with Y and rotated, poked and prodded. Click on a relevant hotspot and it will let you choose an item to use on it. Find a lock, press it, and you can rummage through your dozens of items to find the right key.
I had a completely different way of playing from my kids. I would pick up EVERYTHING. If it wasn’t bolted down, it was mine. My kids would leave everything in the room, and would only pick something up if they needed it. I found their approach messy: how can you find the puzzle if it’s covered in stuff? They found my approach cognitively overwhelming: how can you keep track of what you’ve picked up if the inventory runs off the bottom of the screen?
I’m not convinced there is a truly satisfying way of dealing with the many, many items in a scene. There are just too many of them, and it’s almost impossible to tell which will be useful and which won’t. It is part of Escape Simulator’s charm – that sorting through the detritus is part of the process – but, having played for many hours now, I also think it’s a problem. There’s just too much clutter to meaningfully deal with.
Controls That can Feel Like a Drag
If you can’t pick something up, you can probably still drag it. Escape Simulator likes to give you pots that can be pulled (and then smashed), drawers that can be opened, and chairs that can be pulled and checked under. Again, I’m on the fence with these interactions. They’re slightly too awkward, mostly because they try to convey the heaviness of the real-life equivalents. But they just end up feeling clumsy. It doesn’t help that Escape Simulator uses virtually every face button, and they are easily confused.
The thing is, though, that all of this ungainliness is worth it. It may not sound like it from my initial grumbling, but the underlying puzzles are so very good that you can push these problems aside. And a small part of me enjoys the ungainliness too.
Pine Studio have some incredibly talented puzzle designers on their payroll. I love how much Escape Simulator embraces tactility in particular. So many of the puzzles are solved by moving things about, shaking it and shuffling it. Which is where my opening paragraph comes in: Escape Simulator feels like it’s been designed by escape room makers, rather than video game designers. It rewards people who interact with things like they would in real life. My favourite room has you spinning your own zoetrope and moving the arms of some kind of deity.
Collectibles only encourage this tactility further. There are ten or so coins to find in each room, and they’re stashed in the most unlikely places. They can be hidden in the backdrops, even, miles away from the player: you just have to hover the cursor to collect them. They gave me the push I needed to take my time with each level – to not rush them.
A Mind-Boggling Amount of Content (Especially if You Pay More)
And there are so many levels. I was worried when I saw the DLC tab, as there was a danger that Escape Simulator would feel like an empty frame for paid content. I shouldn’t have been concerned: there are plenty of authored levels to tinker with. There are ‘Original’ levels in various themes, from a medieval manor to Egyptian crypts. There are Versus levels that take the co-op aspects and make them more competitive. My favourite are the ‘Extra’ levels that are basically one-shots, trying out unique themes like oppressive graveyards and laboratories full of cat plushies.
The greatest potential comes from ‘Community’, where the levels have been created by players who have modded the PC version of the game. These are raw and often a little shaky in terms of usability, but they’re also further ‘out there’ than the core missions. We loved one called Rita Down Below that made escape rooms out of a giant kids’ pop-up book.
Time will tell if Escape Simulator will become a hub, just as much as a game. By placing it on Game Pass it’s certainly made it accessible to more players, and its initial roster of Community levels seems positive. There is every chance that you could come back to Escape Simulator in a year’s time and find more adventures, and we’re not just talking about the DLC.
Thoroughly Earning the ‘Simulator’ Tag
The suite of features makes Escape Simulator a very different proposition from the other escape room games on the Xbox. This isn’t just a box of puzzles that you will solve in an afternoon and put away, like a dusty copy of Cluedo. Not only are there dozens of escape rooms; not only are there reasons to replay, with collectibles to find and times to beat; but there are user–generated escape rooms, and that list threatens to grow over time.
While the escape rooms are occasionally clunky and messy – did we really need the ability to pick up absolutely everything? – the quality of the puzzles shines through. And when there is a theoretically endless number of rooms to play, Escape Simulator becomes very tempting indeed. It might even replace a trudge into town and handing £50 to Jayden.
Important Links
Escape Simulator Breaks Out On Xbox And Game Pass – https://www.thexboxhub.com/escape-simulator-breaks-out-on-xbox-and-game-pass/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/escape-simulator/9NKBDN695GTT/0010
