Developer: Lone Artisan Games
Publisher: Lone Artisan Games
Platform: PC
Elium – Prison Escape – Review
Elium – Prison Escape is a first and third-person hack and slash game in which you need to get out of the jail you’re stuck in. This game is developed and published by Lone Artisan Games. At the point of reviewing, this is their first published game. The game’s concept sounds good but it could have been done a lot better. It’s not the prison break experience we hoped for.
Story
Elium – Prison Escape does not have any story elements. There are no cinematics or dialogue present in this game. The language spoken by the guards can’t be understood so you can’t even understand what guards are saying. Mostly they only talk when they have seen you so you can imagine what they are saying. The only thing you know is you’re stuck in this prison and you need to get out alive. What the game’s name implies is your only objective. Escaping this prison you’re stuck in.
Graphics
The game looks okay. The lighting in this game is good. The visibility a torch provides is well enough to find your way through the prison. When you’re standing in the shadows, guards won’t see you easily but when you’re in the light of a torch, you’re easy to see. The shadows are good. When looking at an object or person, everything behind that will be blurred. The camera has a good focus function. The guards are not so well designed as the guards and prisoners all look very much alike. The only difference is found in beards and other facial traits.
Sound
The moment you start the game, an eerie music starts to play. This immediately gives you the feeling you need to think before you act. The guards speak in a language that is not to be understood. Fellow prisoners call to you for help and when they’re following you they keep saying “I’ll stay” and “I’ll follow“ with few variations to these two dialogues. They repeat this with every cycle between crouching and standing. This can lead to be very annoying, especially when you have multiple followers as they will all say the same at the same time.
Gameplay
Elium – Prison Escape is a first and third-person hack and slash game. The combat is very hard to master as only swinging your sword is a hard task. You need to click and then swipe with the mouse to the direction you want to swing your sword. In battle it is very hard to land a hit on an opponent as it is very easy to hit an opponent’s shield even when striking from the opposite side of his shield. You can sheathe your weapons to move better and faster. Seeing most of the time the controls appear to be stuck and the character doesn’t move into the direction you want . This gives your opponents many openings to land a hit on yourself. By sneaking you can get past many difficult situations with multiple guards. When sneaking you can execute a stealth kill when you get close to an unaware guard from behind. One advantage is, is that the guards use the same moves as yourself. This also leads to awkward battles as the movements are not as smooth as you would expect.
You also have the ability to kick your opponents to create some distance between you and your would-be attacker. These kicks also deal damage and it could be a great strategy to keep kicking your opponents as they will be hit more often by your kicks than your swings with your sword. It is possible to kick your opponents into furniture that’s around you. For example, when you kick an opponent against a cabinet, it will deal a lot of damage and the opposing guard will often get stuck inside the furniture and die instantly. This can offer an easy way through the levels as sometimes only one kick can be sufficient to kill your opponent.
You can pick up various items in the halls of the prison to use for your convenience. You can throw them by clicking the mouse wheel. This doesn’t work right because often the item will be thrown backwards or just fall to the ground. By using a sack of ash on fires like torches you can extinguish them to keep yourself out of a guard’s sight as your equipment and your visibility will determine if a guard sees you. When in the shadows you can get pretty close in front of them when you’re fully equipped with armor before they notice you. You can equip yourself with weapons and armor by finding these within chests or from your slain enemies. On guards and on tables you can find gold coins. A way to spend these coins has not been found while playing the game. There is however an achievement that can be acquired when you escape with 250 coins or more.
When encountering a guard that has a cell key, you can use that key to open a cell within that same room with another prisoner. when you do, this prisoner will follow you everywhere. You can equip him with everything you can equip yourself so it’s good to loot your enemies and equip your new friend with their equipment. These prisoners will help you fight your way out. At some point this can lead to having an army of five or more prisoners to let them fight your fights for you if you manage to keep them alive.
Conclusion
Elium – Prison Escape doesn’t give you a good jail break experience as you would have hoped. The combat is very hard to master and feels really static. The mechanics in the game need a lot of work as the combat and physics aren’t as good as expected. Kicking guards into cabinets and other furniture might come in handy as fights against your enemies won’t be a walk in the park if you want to play the game as it is intended . The concept of the game seems great as it sounds like a challenge to escape a huge prison but they should have put more work in better mechanics and physics.
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