Those prison guards are suddenly looking a bit peaky
Well, if anything proves The Escapists is all about bizarre crafting combinations, this is it. Team17 has taken February’s pixelprison indie smash and duct-taped it to seemingly the nearest random thing to hand: a set of Walking Dead comic books. It really shouldn’t work. And yet!
Unlike Telltale’s side-stories, this is ripped straight from the comic’s pages – kicking off with cop Rick Grimes’ hospital escape, then racing across issues to take in key scenes such as Hershel’s farm. But the narrative backbone isn’t allowed to mess with The Escapists’ winning formula: there’s all the planning, discovery, crafting and – let’s face it – sometimes mind-numbing routine that made the original. But this time with guns.
In fact, it’s taken real braaains (you knew it was coming) to make the prisonbreak sandbox style fit with a serial structure. You’re still escaping places, but there’s more focus on goals in each safe zone – such as battering all the braingobblers infesting Hershel’s barn. The original prison routine of roll calls and mealtimes is back, but centres around being a good leader (seemingly using choice phrases such as “settle down”.)
By keeping everyone calm, and your base clean and well-protected, your ragtag band’s morale stays high and the ‘zombie threat’ stays low – which in turn helps everyone live to see another day. Highmorale mates will trust you enough that you can, say, hand them a shotgun and frogmarch them directly into a barn full of zombies.
Team17 is promising a Who’s Who of comic characters – plus lots of nudge-wink references – but it’s the prospect of an entire new Escapists’ worth of experimentation that truly tantalises. This edition feels a bit kinder when it comes to tutorials, but it’ll still leave plenty of room for you to discover surprising item interactions.
And, just like the original, this really is being published by Team17. You might think of the studio as ‘those Worms guys’ (not helped by the game across the page), but chatting to the team at Gamescom, it’s clear that they’re secret indie heroes behind the scenes: locating, nurturing and supporting a bunch of unconventional little gems. In some ways, The Escapists: The Walking Dead is the oddest of the lot – but it still makes more sense than bolt-cutters crafted from two metal files and a square of duct tape. Mark Green