GAME: The Escape
AUTHOR: Anonymous
PLATFORM: Windows
SOUND: no
GRAPHICS: no
REVIEWED: 9th January 2006
WALKTHROUGH: n/a
DOWNLOAD: http://www.allthingshappy.com/members/allthingshappy/viewInteractive.aspx?writingID=9


An online HTML game. I'm not too keen on the interface which displays the current text at the top of the screen, then the room description and a list of characters and options further down. I seemed to spend a while every time an option was selected scrolling down the page past the room description that I'd already seen a dozen times to get at the new options. Wouldn't it have been better to stick the room description, once its been seen for the first time, down at the bottom of the screen and have the options displayed at the top? Other than that, the interface is passable although as with the other online games I've played there's a noticeable lag between clicking on an option and the screen displaying your results.

The puzzles were of the sort that probably seemed incredibly inspired to the people writing to the game, but to the poor player they were so vague as to be almost impossible to figure out without the hints.

(One of the puzzles requires the player to examine a sign in a room then set the number on the clock to the same as the number of letters in the words on the sign. What the...? And I was supposed to figure that out? How...?)

Other times, the way the game's set up helps you with puzzles you might otherwise not even be aware existed. I found a crowbar in one location and then noticed somewhere else that an option opened up to use it. At the time, it hadn't occurred to me to even try to use the crowbar in that way... a clear indication that this format is never going to be as good as any of the standard text adventure systems you'd care to name.

Overall the game seemed pretty much bug free and I didn't encounter any error messages popping up on screen like with the other online game I played recently. The main annoyance were the constant reminders littered through the story of the wonders of the system used to create the game, like "look at the amazing things you can do with this system! Isn't it brilliant! Isn't it amazing!" Er... it's just about adequate for getting the job done, but I'm sure a far more polished product could have been created with any of the standard text adventure systems. How this one is supposed to be superior I'm not sure, and I've listed above some of the ways in which it's inferior.

The Escape is probably best viewed as a novelty item as opposed to a serious game. While it's certainly playable, the system's flaws prevent it ever being anything more.

4 out of 10