
The Escapists is challenging and tense, but also engaging and deeply enjoyable. But like a beam of hope shining through the damp dirt of an escape tunnel, the tribulation is worth it in the end. Much like the bygone era of video games from which it derives its colorful, pixelated aesthetic, The Escapists is tough and refuses to hold your hand, leading to many hours of trial-and-error experiments as you test the walls of your confines. And though it won't take you 19 years of tunneling through a wall with a rock hammer, The Escapists, a game about escaping prison, doesn't make the monumental task all that easy, either. If history and Hollywood have taught us anything, it's that breaking out of prison isn't exactly a cakewalk. I am a prisoner no longer I am an escapist. I reached that twelfth step, just beyond that accursed concrete barrier, readied a shovel crafted from a sheet of metal and duct tape, looked up, and began to dig-one month to walk 12 steps, but it was worth the wait. That night, as the guards patrolled the darkened corridors, I reached the end of an underground tunnel I spent the last two weeks digging. One, two, three, four…I can't afford to this screw up, not again. From the hole I dug in my cell, covered from sight the majority of the time by my storage desk, to under the prison wall and, at last-one, two, three, four, five, six, a dozen more times-to the fresh air, the singing birds. I must have counted those 12 paces a dozen times, but once more I rattle them off in my head: one, two, three, four, five, six….
