Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes - The Escapists

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Starting point is 00:00:19 Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. Hey guys, welcome to this Quick Take episode. We're so excited to have you here with us. In the past, these Quick Take episodes actually were only available to those who financially supported the show through Apple subscriptions and Patreon. But due to popular demand, we have decided to shake up the perks for our supporters and we'll be releasing these Quick Takes on Saturdays to everyone, giving you all some extra free content that was previously unavailable to the public and these quick takes

Starting point is 00:00:51 are a little more laid back and they're hosted by just one of us so sit back relax and enjoy this quick take episode shazam! Boom! so much for your support of the show. It really does mean the world to us. And what I wanted to talk to you guys about today is a small indie game that you may or may not have heard of called The Escapists. This is a game where you basically work on breaking out of prison. It's got those 8-bit graphics. It's kind of like a top-down view. It might have been something that you've seen along the way because they did also make a sequel. But it's time to get your prison break on in this game. Basically, you wake up as an inmate on day one, and there are a series of six different prisons that you can pick from. And really, the only goal is just to successfully break your way out of the prison. And there's a lot of ways to do

Starting point is 00:02:03 that. All the prisons are a little bit different, so they require different strategies. And basically, there's kind of like a lot of elements that are all kind of working at the same time. First of all, being that you are in a prison, there is natural structure to the day. So overnight, there are guards patrolling the corridors and they do bedroom checks. And during the day you have to show up to showers and meals. If you miss things like that, you do get some suspicion put on you. If you go into the wrong areas, if you end up having contraband on your character, that can get discovered.

Starting point is 00:02:41 Whether it's a guard who checks items on you, or if you're hiding items in your room and get caught with it, and then you can lose items. And I think one of the neatest things about the escapists that really make it unique is that there's a whole collection of different recipes that you can use for crafting. So for example, in the beginning, you don't start out with much. I think you might get like a comb and a toothbrush and maybe a handful of other things. But basically, you can start to collect items, whether you find them in the game, whether it's another inmate's room, or if you find items in different areas of the prison, and you can start to combine them to make other things.

Starting point is 00:03:20 So for example, you can combine a sock with a bar of soap. Guess what? Now you got yourself a weapon. You can can swing that thing around hit people with that weighted sock you can also start to do more sophisticated weapons like you can take a broom handle a glass shard and a roll of duct tape now you got yourself a spear baby running around in this prison uh you can also do some other neat things that help you work on escaping. So for example, you can take toothpaste and combine it with talcum powder, and it gives you a wad of putty, which you can actually use to press a key into, and it makes a mold of the key. So you can kind of imagine how you can use all these things together to start to work your way

Starting point is 00:04:01 out of the prison. You can build things like pickaxes and shovels and lights and even take guards clothing and try to impersonate a guard and walk your way out of the prison. It's very neat. One of the things that's also pretty cool is that you can get different jobs around the prison. So you might work in the workshop, which is going to give you access to some different tools. You can work in the laundry room, which gives you access to guard clothing and things of that nature. And so basically, as you play the game, you can take on different work assignments, and that'll give you access to some equipment that you can try to smuggle or work with and use that job, which will also put you in a part of the prison you normally don't have access to.

Starting point is 00:04:47 And so basically, you can opportunistically use your job to either build things or to maybe, you know, make your escape plan. And then the best way to exit is maybe from one of those job areas. And that might be where you launch your big escape. One thing that's kind of funny is that since the guards do patrol the grounds at night, if you're ever found outside of your room, of course, you're going to lose any contraband on you. They're going to put you back in your bed. You're going to lose all that progress.

Starting point is 00:05:16 And I remember in one of my first playthroughs, I had played for a couple hours and finally had this grand plan of how to escape. I end up escaping from my room at night. I went through a vent and I started running around on top of like the catwalk above the prison and they realized that my body was not in the bed. And that's when I learned, oh, you can actually combine two pillows and a bed sheet and that'll make a bed dummy that you can leave in your bed and then they think you're there. And so kind of through like trial and error, you get to learn all these things in the game. But there's combat, you fight other inmates, you can even fight other

Starting point is 00:05:55 guards. Sometimes if you beat them down, and you're not caught, you can take items off of them. So even that can be very strategic but it's very fun the difficulty ramps up quite a bit i've seen some very funny youtube videos where people just take plastic forks from the cafeteria and if you bash it against a wall you can make like a little bit of a of a weak shiv and then people will just sit during the day and just keep working on one block on the initial prison and then you can just walk straight out day and just keep working on one block on the initial prison and then you can just walk straight out of it. So it starts off like super easy like that to having these really advanced high-tech security prisons. It can be a ton of fun. I didn't even

Starting point is 00:06:36 know this until today, but they also made a Walking Dead spin-off of it. I haven't played it. Sounds kind of neat. It includes characters from the show. And I did notice on Steam, actually, as of today, they are actually bundled together on sale for only $6 for the Escapist 1 plus the Walking Dead spinoff. I did take a look around. It looks like it's usually $18 to $25. This is one that I don't know I'd quite spend that much. I squeezed over 25 hours out of The Escapist, but due to the graphical nature and the fact that it's definitely an indie game, it might be worth waiting around until it's on sale. They did also make The Escapist 2, which I have actually not played very much, but that did include a multiplayer mode if you want to play with two people at the same time. I did like The Escapist 2, but it was right after playing so much of Escapist 1 that I was just a little bit burned out at the time. But one of these days, I'd love to get back to it. So anyway, The Escapist, if that sounds fun, crafting, fighting, making plans, escaping

Starting point is 00:07:42 a prison, I think it's a ton of fun. Hopefully you guys will enjoy it too so that's all that i got for you here today and i'll see you guys next week

Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes - The Escapists

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