Prison life made adorable.

Published March 9, 2015 2:07 PM PST By Liana Kerzner @redlianak

Pixel art is one of those glorious things that can make the most horrible things seem soft and safe. The retro prison break RPG game The Escapists is a poster child for this phenomenon. In The Escapists, you control a prison inmate who is roughed up by guards, and attacked by other inmates in the shower. You fashion rudimentary shiv weapons, and mount daring escape attempts that often lead to solitary confinement. But it's all just... really adorable.

It's clear, however, that a lot of thought went into the design of The Escapists. The goal is to escape, but the experience of playing is one of the more rewarding classic role-playing experiences I've had in a while. While you're trying to figure out your path to freedom, you make friends and enemies in prison, find work and do favours for money, and even decorate your cell, if you're like me and want to maximize the space in my storage inventory. The character system is simple -- a three-stat combination of strength, speed and intellect -- and the game rewards exploration and experimentation... although sometimes that reward comes in the form of "tough love" slaps on the wrist that discourage the player from being too reckless.

The Escapists can get downright frustrating at times, and even the easiest prison level is challenging. But the experience of playing the game is so damned enjoyable that it works. The Escapists is the sort of game I know I'd spend far too time with if I was playing it for fun as opposed to the purposes of review. If you need big impressive graphics to enjoy a game there isn't much here for you, but if you're the type of gamer who prioritizes a really solid gameplay experience over whiz-bang graphics and you have a modicum of patience, I can't recommend The Escapists enough!

You start with a brief tutorial that gives you the basics. Play close attention, because I didn't find the button mapping on the Xbox One version terribly intuitive. There are also some hiccups regarding question completion. I've tried to overcome those in the play tips section.

Play Tips

In order to complete a fetch quest, you have to talk to the recipient character while they have the yellow symbol over their head. Then you must navigate to the "Give" tab, then give him the item in your inventory.

Limit the number of illegal (red font) items that you're stashing in your room. The room inspections are random and you need to be able to grab the items before the guards get them.

In order to replace a wall block that you've removed, you need to toggle away from the item in your inventory, then back onto it to get the locator prompt.

Always cover your tracks! Guards find missing vents, missing chunks of wall, and holes in the ground really quickly.

A cool element of The Escapists is that you have the option of customizing every inmate in the prison. It can be pretty funny to use the names of people you know when you start rumbling during prison riots. You're going to be spending a lot of time with the characters you create, so it's worth the chuckles to take some time off the top to make the game your own.

Once in the prison, The Escapists is a game of slow progress and trial and error. There are numerous ways to escape each prison, each with its own pros and cons. Patience and cunning are rewarded. The game is elegantly designed to give you subtle hints without spoon-feeding you solutions, especially regarding crafting. For instance, after getting busted removing a vent cover, the game recommended I craft a fake vent cover using two units of paper mache. It didn't tell me how to make paper mache, but that was a simple process of elimination. (It's made by combining glue and toilet paper.) Hints regarding crafting can be purchased from payphones, much like old mystery games. That throwback feature was something I greatly appreciated. If you want to "cheat," there's also an Escapists wiki.

There is a rhythm to daily prison life and it's important to keep track of that. If you're not where you're supposed to be, the guards are much more hostile. Sometimes they'll even shoot at you. Certain doors are locked at certain times of day as well, but those are the times that the fences in those areas can be slipped through.

One of the many areas you'll roam around through.

While all this is going on, you also have to manage health and energy meters. Your health determines how much damage you can take before getting knocked out. Energy is needed to do most in-game tasks. Certain activities, like meals and exercise, recharge or increase your health. Exercise, however, decreases your energy. Taking a shower or resting will replenish that energy. Of course, fighting depletes health. But fighting is fun!

What's not fun is getting caught for tiny little transgressions, like accidentally standing on your desk in your cell in view of a guard. So act deliberately. The game rewards caution. Some things that I at first thought were design errors seemed more and more like deliberate design choices to add difficulty.

It took me a bit to really get the hang of it, in part because I kept getting distracted by the sheer fun of causing prison riots. But the game clicked for me as soon as I earned my first escape, and it rapidly became so addictive I couldn't put it down. The Escapists is a game that's much bigger than it first appears, and provides undeniable value for money if you're a retro pixel art fan.

This game was reviewed with a copy of the Xbox One version provided by the publisher's PR.

Images courtesy of Team17.