It takes a long series of days to gather and assemble the bits that you need for an escape, and it’s easy to lose all the important ones with just the slightest mistake.

How much you appreciate the result will primarily depend on two factors: whether you like being left alone to figure out what to do, because the basic tutorial covers very little of what you need to know to actually escape one of the real prisons, and how annoying this repetition is going to be over time. Social times like dinner, meanwhile, offer a chance to chat with other prisoners, recruit assistance, and collect mini-quests like retrieving someone’s stolen DVD or causing a scene during the next roll-call. Soon I realized it’s also a great time to sneak into other prisoners’ cells and carefully pocket anything good from their stash. Morning roll-call is time for everyone to gather and be told the business of the day, including whose cells are about to be inspected for contraband. It’s a game that looks like Prison Architect’s black-sheep brother, but plays about as a regimented sandbox to first be controlled by, and then to subvert.

The escapist video game download