Prison Escape Online – Review
Doing fun activities outside, or in this case, being locked up in a room together, seem like things from a distant past. We now have to make do with entertainment at home, or going out for an old school walk in the neighborhood or forest. Several companies have not been standing still during this pandemic, however. We see an influx in online escape rooms, some ditching the traditional format and offer an animated (cartoon) experience instead. While these can be entertaining, it’s still nice to have something realistic and tangible to do. The latter seemed very important for the Prison Escape Online experience, where you would deal with real actors and shape the narrative to your team’s liking.
As we cannot dive into spoiler territory, all we can say is that you, your friends and a hacker (assigned to you by the Prison Escape team) are on a mission to free an innocent man out of prison. The traditional justice system has failed, and thus it is up to a ragtag group of specialists to make it happen.
Before actually starting the game, you’ll get access to a page with background material about the wrongly convicted man’s case. You can read through these files at a leisurely pace, to properly prepare yourselves. Those being startled by having to ‘study’ in advance, do not fret, it’s not that much content to plow through but it gives you something to hold on to, as well as a few tools to aid you in your mission. Slightly before the main attraction, the team does their best to calmly explain the experience, asks if you still have questions before you go, and actually makes you feel quite at ease for the event to come. All of this happens in a Google Meet environment, which is actually ideal for something like this. The host can easily show you the footage you need to see, and swap whenever needed. In this scenario, again without spoiling things, your assigned hacker may show you different parts of the environment and allow you to interact with actors in said areas. This is basically the premise of the game: your team is pulling all the strings and will have to act and react to the things going on. This means that the narrative can be driven towards every possible angle, even creating replay value for those who want to try a different approach.
Arguably things like this are not often played twice, we could imagine people doing it to perhaps try things with a different approach. The actors are very professional, even when proposed some more original ways of clearing the mission at hand or having team members that perhaps act a bit silly. It’s quite nice to see how well this experience is crafted and tailored to the players’ needs and ideas. Even though among the team we jokingly talked about doing extreme absurd requests, we think we played things quite nicely, and that there is actually room for many different realistic requests that could also result in a successful escape. You have a lot of power in this scenario and that is also what makes it very engaging. Your actions have consequences, and this is also the part that slowly pulls you into the experience. While being somewhat reserved at first, you soon find yourself playing your role to the best of your capabilities, slowly seeing that countdown timer make its way to zero. Will you be successful? Will you resort to violent tactics? Will you take a stealthy approach? Or will you just combine all these aspects, figuring out the best way to free an innocent man?
We had an interesting chat with the director of our experience after our mission, and we were impressed to see how much work and love is poured into this project. Even when escape rooms open up again, we hope this online experience remains an option as well. We talked about how the experience is indeed tailored to the team and that you truly are in command. It’s clear that the team is also very open to feedback, to even let you know how you did, and to dive further into the creation of the project.
Even though we have basically been singing praises from start to finish during this review, we also have to say that, depending on your own nature, it might actually be quite difficult to get into a game such as this. It’s not easy having to instruct real people, even in a fictional scenario. It’s not the type of escape room where you tinker with puzzles, while perhaps the rest of the team is also looking for clues. You truly have to be present, active and not too shy. The fact that you’re also working with real people, as well as the limitations of the construct of the game, means that not every command may turn out the way you think it will turn out. Not every instruction is possible, and some are perhaps not interpreted the same way by the cast members as to how you pictured it when giving said instruction(s).
Conclusion
If you’re looking for something that truly captures the experience of an action-packed escape room, you truly cannot go wrong with Prison Escape Online. We enjoyed ourselves from start to finish, being truly immersed in the scenario and experience. We shaped the game via our instructions and only lady luck could tell us if our choices were the proper ones. While we could not spoil anything during our article, the actors made the entire experience believable and extremely enjoyable. Those on the fence to try this one out, the team is also readily available for questions, remarks, and other information.
Prison Escape Online - Review,
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