Developer: Raccoons Studio
Publisher: Raccoons Studio
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Shipwreck Escape – Review
When sailing isn’t going as smoothly as you had hoped, what would you do? Do you go down with your ship or do you try to stay afloat? Find this all out in Raccoons Studio’s Shipwreck Escape, a 2,5D platformer game with puzzle elements. You can solve the puzzles, save other passengers – or not, and find out how this shipwreck catastrophe happened in the first place at the end of the game. If you can get to the end at least.
Story
Working as a croupier on the luxurious ship, Ataraxia, your day starts out like any other. You’re catering to rich folks by dealing their poker cards, while you’re also dealing with their usual bullshit; when suddenly, everything goes black. You wake up at the very bottom of the ship, without any recollection of what happened or how you ended up down there. You smell burning and you can clearly hear water pouring into the ship at a rapid speed. This seems like a good sign for you to get the hell out of there.
In this sticky situation, you want to reach higher ground as soon as possible. Through multiple decks, you ascend higher and higher, while you try to outrun the rising water. Along the way, you encounter another survivor who stays with you throughout the whole ordeal. Perhaps by working together as a team, you both might get out of this burning shipwreck alive. Who knows? You might even find out what caused this disaster. Sadly, only at the very end you’ll know what has happened to the ship, and throughout the different levels, you’ll have to make do with short snippets of unrelated story content. This is somewhat disappointing.
Graphics
Shipwreck Escape is a 2.5D experience, which basically translates to having 3D rendered models on a 2D playing field. For most of the game, you’ll be playing in the aforementioned environment. As for the cutscenes, they are presented in an amazing 2D comic-like style, that is also animated. The speech bubbles shown in the cutscenes are also used during your gameplay. While the game does look quite spiffy, it’s quite a shame that we don’t get to see more cutscenes in-between the levels.
Also, kudos to the developers for making the levels actually rock like a ship on the water. It’s a small thing, but it greatly helps with the immersion of it all. For those of us who don’t easily get seasick, it’s a fun thing to have.
Sound
Not much can be said about the game’s sound. There are no voice-overs and barely any background music (except when you’re on the menu screen). You can occasionally hear some slight tensive music build up when the water is rising, but that’s about it. There are, however, such immersive sound effects throughout the levels, you’d think you’re actually in the hull of a ship.
Gameplay
Shipwreck Escape is a 2.5D action, adventure single-player game with some puzzle elements added to the mix. It’s similar to a side-scrolling platformer since you play linearly, except there’s no jumping involved. You do, however, have to crouch and perform some actions here and there. You can also sprint for a short amount of time, but that’s your own choice. That’s about it. The controls are fairly easy since you don’t have to do that much. This doesn’t mean that the game isn’t hard, however. No, no, no, cap’n. You can’t just walk through the decks willy-nilly without any obstacles blocking your way. Also, let us not forget about the rising water and the impending doom that awaits us if we loiter for too long.
The game has four levels; with every level divided into five parts. Of course, every level gets a bit harder than the previous one, but luckily, you can always change the difficulty level (easy, normal, hard) whenever you please. Each level will take up around one to two hours, depending on how well you play or how lucky you are.
See, the levels are quite big to explore in the short amount of time you have. Especially when it has empty areas that are absolutely useless. Throughout the decks, there are also trapped NPCs you can save; if you are morally inclined to do so. That being said, exploring every room, solving puzzles, and saving people in one go is pretty unlikely. Unless you’re very lucky, chances are that you have to replay the level multiple times, since dying means you have to restart. After memorizing the best paths and a bit of strategizing whether or not you should save someone, you’ll eventually reach the finish line.
When looking at the puzzles, they’re not that complicated. The puzzles are more like obstacles, e.g. hot steam, electricity, and locked doors. To overcome them, you have to turn a wheel or find a key in another part of the level. On most of the levels, you also have to switch to a secondary character to explore other parts of the ship where the primary character can’t get to. So, by the time you realize what you need to do, and where you need to actually go on that level, you’re just seconds away from drowning.
Conclusion
Shipwreck Escape is a bit like any other 2.5D side-scrolling title in the genre but misses the mark. It’s easy to play and it can keep you busy for the day, but other than that, there’s nothing to praise besides the sound and visuals. The game can be enjoyable, but it can also get so very frustrating after a while because of the repetitiveness of its gameplay. The puzzles are not challenging at all and are the same on most levels. You know what you have to do after a short while; you just need to run around the ship like a madman a few times to find the solution you were looking for. You just want to move on to the point that saving other people doesn’t even feel worth it anymore. Completing each level in Shipwreck Escape is mainly with trial and error, and barely has to do with actual puzzle-solving by using logic. It’s mostly running around, exploring different paths, and finding out that you should’ve gone the other route.
Shipwreck Escape – Review,
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