
Escape Rooms really started to come into fashion just before the pandemic hit and they really seemed to scratch a puzzle itch for many people. Trapped in a room, you have to solve a series of puzzles in order to find your way out. To add to the stress, they have to be solved within the hour if you wanted to avoid the stamp of failure.
NEScape! aims to capture that same experience, but within the 8 bit stylings of a NES title. In fact, the game is even playable on original hardware too, so you can imagine the effort it took to make it work. And it really does work!
Many thanks to the publisher for the review code.
SIXTY MINUTES TO NESCAPE!
Right from the start, the game throws you into the thick of things as it asks you to solve a rudimentary puzzle just to enter the game. There’s an instruction manual in the options menu that will offer you some basic starting advice, but otherwise once you are in then you have a mere hour in order to find your way out. This time limit will be offputting for many, for sure, but most puzzles remain the same each playthrough so it’s very easy to get back to where you failed should you run out of time.
As for the game itself, it’s presented in a similar way to the Cube Escape games that are popular on both the mobile and PC platforms. You have a single screen where you can examine objects, pick up items, and interact with the puzzles. Clicking on the side of the screen will flip to the next wall that contains more stuff, and so on. The room is cubic, so you only really have four screens to worry about.
The puzzles come in various types too, from solving observational puzzles to work out a code, to marble mazes, to obnoxious sliding puzzles. There’s a hell of a lot here, and some of them can be pretty challenging too. Inventory items can also be used or combined to solve parts of a puzzle, and fit really well within the context of the game. Whilst most of the puzzles are fine and not particularly convoluted, there are some than can prove to be a problem. The aforementioned sliding puzzle is incredibly hard and it’s one of the earliest puzzles in the game, and the audio for the Walkman is so unclear that it could prove problematic for non native speakers of the language.
These problems make that hour time limit even more of an annoyance, as you’ll almost certainly run out of time. The game has four distinct chapters, so perhaps giving people an hour for each one could have alleviated the frustration somewhat. Failing and having to repeat that damn sliding puzzle again may end up being the last straw for many players!
VERDICT
NEScape! offers a really well-made NES Escape Room experience, and I really hope that we see more in the future. Sure, the game may not be the longest length and lacks in replayability, but anyone looking for a refreshing puzzle experience should certainly give the game a shot!
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