Escape Simulator Review (DeadPoolX)
Escape Simulator is an online cooperative game where you and up to three other people try to solve puzzles together and uncover collectibles.
PROS:
+ Cooperative gameplay.
+ Cartoony graphics that're pleasing to the eye.
+ Lots of rooms made by developer (and more comping out for FREE!).
+ Rooms have different themes, ranging from Ancient Egyptian to Victorian mansions to futuristic space stations.
+ Public and private gaming.
+ Male and female characters, where you can choose clothing, hair style, skin color, hair color, etc.
+ Workshop integration from the start (with a bunch of player-made rooms).
+ Developer-made rooms are generally small, which cuts down on motion sickness.
+ Options included in-game to deal with motion sickness.
+ Room editor is relatively simple to use and relies on a tile-based grid system.
+ Time limit is purely for achievements and you can completely ignore it if you wish.
+ Relatively low system requirements for a game released in 2021.
+ Will run on older operating systems like Windows 7 or Win 8/8.1, and is compatible with Mac OS and Linux.
+ Steam Cloud
NEUTRAL:
+/- Time limit might annoy some players who feel as if they need to complete the room before time is up, despite the time meaning nothing beyond achievements.
+/- Community-made rooms in the Workshop can vary greatly in quality (although this is through no fault of the developer).
CONS:
- Escape Simulator is only really fun when playing alongside at least one other person, which might make this game difficult to play if you have to rely on random players online.
- Tokens are sometimes hidden in locations that are nearly impossible to see or get to, although the most recent developer-made rooms have been fixing that.
- Game engine isn't designed (or at least optimized) for large rooms because some larger community-made rooms can cause a significant drop in framerate.
- Very limited character customization, but at least character customization exists at all. In many Escape Room games you can't even make a character and instead you're essentially a "floating head."
- While most of the graphics in the game are quite nice, there are some startling low textures on some (but not all!) carpets and other pieces of furniture.
VERDICT: Escape Simulator is a fun game to play alongside friends or family (my wife is my co-op partner), and is probably the best escape room game we've come across on Steam up to this point. The developers have done everything they can to mitigate motion sickness (which is a real problem for some people, my wife included) and make the game as user-friendly as possible while giving people tools to be creative.
The only drawback I can really see to this game is that while you don't technically need other players (as specified earlier, you can play single player), Escape Simulator would feel empty or lifeless without other real people involved. So for gamers who don't have readily available co-op partners, grouping with randoms is really the only alternative and in my experience that's a real crapshoot.
That said... if you have at least one co-op partner and you enjoy escape rooms (and puzzles in general), I'd strongly recommend Escape Simulator. It's a great non-combative, stress-free alternative to the vast majority of games out there.