Leaving a room is often a difficult task. I frequently find myself having to look for clues as to how I’m supposed to leave the house. Fortunately, when I get bored, I can just open the door and walk on out. In the world of videogames, you’re not usually given such luxuries. Killer Escape is an example of how to leave a room with a sadistic murderer on the loose. And it won’t take you too long, either.
Leaving a room is often a difficult task. I frequently find myself having to look for clues as to how I’m supposed to leave the house. Fortunately, when I get bored, I can just open the door and walk on out. In the world of videogames, you’re not usually given such luxuries. Killer Escape is an example of how to leave a room with a sadistic murderer on the loose. And it won’t take you too long, either.
Killer Escape starts off in a dark and bloody jail cell. As the nameless protagonist, you find yourself looking around only to see some masked man barge into the room. The crazed lunatic spends a minute threatening you and eventually leaves the room, with the cell door locked behind him. With waiting not being a reasonable option, your goal is to find a way to escape from the hell surrounding you.
Killer Escape’s gameplay closely follows most other room escape games. You’re put in a first-person view, and you a point-and-click style of play to pick up items, solve puzzles, and read notes. Anyone who’s played any room escape or point-and-click puzzle will have no issue becoming familiar with the gameplay. Consequently, that same group of people are likely to be underwhelmed. As far as gameplay is concerned, Killer Escape doesn’t do anything new. The puzzles aren’t difficult, with the answers being blatantly provided in most situations. At times, puzzles will require you to use certain items with certain parts of the environment. There’s no challenge in deciding which item to use and how to use it. The only difficulty is finding the item in the first place.
This leads to Killer Escape‘s biggest problem: Its presentation. Killer Escape‘s visuals are dark but polished. However, the large amount of detail makes it difficult to find clues, items, or interactive parts of the environment. While rattling your brain is an intended part of any room escape game, it’s disappointing for it to come from design choices that make finding things feel more like a chore than a hunt.
Once you find what you’re looking for, the game continues to be simple and short. In fact, Killer Escape is far too short. Despite getting stuck searching for something placed almost off-screen, I still managed to complete the game in under an hour on my first run. The game’s story provides a sense of urgency, and the length seems to back it up, but there doesn’t seem to be any penalty for taking as long as you need. The game frequently tells you need to get out as fast as possible, but those appear to be empty threats.
In fact, these empty threats accurately summarize Killer Escape. The game looks nice, the touch controls are precise, and it’s completely free, but it consistently fails to capitalize on its strengths. Its length, environments, and story are all disappointing. It’s only real saving grace is that it is short enough where it doesn’t feel like much time was wasted while playing it.
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