After 100%ing the game by finishing all routes and getting all achievements I wanted to share my thoughts on the game as there are some good things about Inescapable, but many areas where it fails and could have been improved. To keep things more organised I’ll list off the things that Inescapable does right before breaking down the problems.

The good
The premise of Inescapable blends itself well into creating drama between characters and most certainly something fans of games like the Danganronpa series, Zero Escape series, Your Turn to Die, etc will resonate with. It also reflects the dark psychological curiosity of how strangers can be pushed to their limits akin to reality shows like Big Brother or Survivor, especially with characters being held captive against their will for six months. The artwork within the game is also praiseworthy as the artists did an amazing job of making every character’s design unique and reflect their personality in some form. It was also a delight to hear characters use their native tongue throughout the game with everyone's performance being good. However, I have to give extra praise to the VAs for Isak, Eva, and Naomi. Speaking of characters, there is a huge variety of personalities for everyone to find someone to like as well as everyone demonstrating some form of character development and having their moment to shine throughout the story.

The bad
Marketing
A big part of why the game is receiving a large amount of negative reviews stems from being misled by the marketing of the game. I understand that naming Danganronpa and Zero Escape as sources of inspiration for the game was done to increase traction for sales, however, this would ultimately end up shooting the developers in the foot. The ramifications of this are priming players to believe that the game will be a killing game, this isn’t necessarily false as there is a route within the game that does replicate the Danganronpa formula of having a body discovery (pink blood as well!), investigating the scene of the crime, questioning everyone, and having a comic style conclusion of the events that lead to the death of a character. The problem however is that this only makes up one of the four possible routes so players will be forced to play three other routes that deviate from what they already know and love. The Steam page doesn’t help matters either with the game being tagged with “mystery”, “detective”, and “investigation”, as well as it being referred to as a social thriller. The price has also been heavily criticised, but it was stated by the developers that completion of the first route would take around 40 hours, with completion of all routes taking up to 90 hours. If this was the case then I, as well as many others could justify it. However, I’ve finished all routes and gotten all achievements before hitting that 40-hour mark which makes me believe their estimation of playtime is vastly overestimated. Granted this could be due to myself being a quick reader, but estimating 90 hours of reading seems excessive.

Gameplay problems
Even as a visual novel I feel like inescapable is lacking key features that are synonymous with the visual novel genre. For example, there is no gallery for you to accumulate CGs as you progress through the game nor any option to see character sprites or listen to the music or voice lines in the game. Additionally, the game lacks a skip read text feature which tarnishes part of the replay value as you run the risk of skipping new dialogue which is puzzling as they opted to disable the skip feature altogether in the settings when you first begin. However, even when you do use the skip or auto text feature, it’s only enabled for a single scene so you will need to click it for every new scene. Keep in mind you’ll have to reclick it up to three times per in-game day which can be very monotonous if you are trying to access a new route. Not to mention, if you do accidentally misclick dialogue that is voiced, when you open up the log you are unable to replay said voiced line. Although not terrible, a maximum of 30 save slots did become a nuisance when replaying the game as you will have to overwrite save files which can be confusing. It would be appreciated if there were more save slots or once you begin a route there’s some sort of indicator on the save file to reflect the route you are on.

Even outside of being a visual novel, there are game-specific designs that I can’t quite wrap my head around for why they have done it the way they have. For example, character bios are a great feature of the game for providing players with a foundation of knowledge for the contestants and I was greatly fond of the gossip and dirt feature later attached to the bios. However, the fact that the character bios are later removed is abysmal. Why incorporate a feature if you only take it away from players, especially the dirt and gossip aspects? It feels like a missed opportunity for the bios to be expanded upon, especially with spending time with certain characters akin to how Danganronpa does it. Even with the gossip and dirt, it feels extremely underutilised and only used for the player instead of Harri. This is made more apparent when you can have scenes with characters where Harri asks them about a certain piece of information and you get their side of events. As a result, it feels like every contestant has done many ♥♥♥♥♥♥ things without having the opportunity to see the whole picture.

The character bios is not the only app that is underutilised, there is also the inventory which is used for the narrative only a couple of times, and once again is not something the player controls. Instead throughout the game, there are objects you can collect but serve no purpose and feel more akin to rewards for witnessing certain events. Taking another page out of Danganronpa, this felt like another opportunity for you to give characters items to bond with or at least find out more information about them. Depending on the route you end up on, there are two out of the three apps that you unlock that are practically useless. The first is the wireland app on the greed route which isn’t even shown on the phone but only ever mentioned during conversations. The problem arises when everyone is out for themselves but there is no possible way to track how much money everyone else possesses which could have been a great form of conflict between the cast. But last, because you never have any indicator as to how much money people have, regardless of what people charge for their services it will never have an impact. Then there is the voting app used in the lust route where you can rank characters, the only problem being that this has no bearing on the story whatsoever. As a result, what is the point of incorporating these apps if they aren’t even taken advantage of for the story?

Speaking of unnecessary features, I have to question the inclusion of the word guesser, fishing, and arcade minigames as once again they don’t serve a purpose for the story nor do they reward players for completing them outside of an achievement. Again this feels like a missed opportunity for players to be rewarded with something that can affect relationships, for example having an interaction with each character whose score you’re able to beat within the arcade games.

Next up are the multiple narratives that were advertised, again this created unrealistic expectations when you cited the Zero Escape series as an inspiration as people would expect a flowchart of some kind where your choices matter. However, I understand why a flowchart would not work for this game in particular; as choices are accumulative rather than choosing from A or B options. Nonetheless, the choices that you do make don’t feel like they make a huge impact in the short term and are treated akin to any other visual novel with diverting narrative threads. As a result, some of the choices you make feel inconsequential but can result in you in a route that you wouldn’t expect. This is more of a problem after your first ending as there is a lack of information to convey to the player as to how their choices can impact the route selection, something as simple as highlighting the previous choice and stating what route this point towards would be very beneficial. The problem though with this approach is that because choices are acumulative, it makes the start of the game very repetitive with the majority of the first 50 days being skipped upon replay. To make matters worse, if you are actively avoiding certain actions to prevent repeating a route, the game fails to make days pass easily. This is because the only way to forfeit your free time is to either start an arcade game and then quit or go fishing and catch a fish, both options taking time to execute. It doesn’t make sense as to why there couldn’t be an option to just take a nap within your room to progress time like how many other visual novels do.

Finally, when you do eventually arrive on a new route, there are limited choices for you to make which makes the route feel very linear. Once again this feels like a missed opportunity for there to be multiple endings within each route to maximise replayability as well as a way to incorporate a flowchart to allow players to skip directly to the beginning of a route.

Story problems
I understand that the game was supposed to be character-driven, but with such an incredible premise I would have thought the developers would have done more with the story than what was done. What I mean is they describe the game as a social thriller but there was never really a point where I was on the edge of my seat or scared for the characters from tension. The root of this problem is found in the lack of threat within the game. Even though the hosts reiterate that there are no rules, the game just bleeds into becoming a slice of life as if everyone is just on a paid resort. Exactly why would any of the contestants want to leave? They have all their needs met with the show providing shelter, food, water, entertainment, and heck contestants can even request items for deeds. But again, this feature is underutilised and not taken seriously as contestants can easily make an offer and not follow up on said offer and there are no consequences for this. One could make the argument that the hosts don’t want to interfere too much, but that’s thrown out of the window once you start different routes as they can complain that it’s too boring with nothing going on. They can stop providing them with necessities but this is only explored in one of the routes.

Once again it feels like a missed opportunity to take a page out of Danganronpa with the hosts providing motives to stir up drama. For example, the hosts have all this dirt on all the contestants so why don’t they use that against them to engage with the show more? The possibilities are endless as we could have bear witness to see how far people are willing to go to hide their secrets or to get the upper hand within the game. What about a scenario where contestants have the choice to gain rewards if they screw over their fellow peers, this would have been a great form of conflict but this was largely ignored. Even with how the game is structured, every single route has problems that do a disservice to the premise.

The first of these routes is the lust route which is hands down the worst route in the entire game. It has the potential to introduce the popularity vote which rewards the most popular contestant as well as punishing the least popular contestants. The problem lies in that this shouldn’t be exclusive to this route and should have been incorporated near the beginning of the show. Why exactly would the popularity of contestants only become relevant after the viewers have watched for 50-60 days? It could have planted the seed to see what contestants are willing to do to gain popularity as well as had the potential to explore the theme of how popularity can warp the way people think and act. This would have blended especially well for the characters of Eva who constantly wants to be approved and in the spotlight, as well as Isak who is contemptuous of being an outcast. However, instead of doing this, the game decides to focus on being as perverted as possible by the protagonist becoming a womaniser. Not to mention, the actual punishments were very insignificant and did nothing to cause fear or tension. If you wanted a social thriller, why not have the least popular contestant be killed off or something? But least the popularity contest becomes counter-productive when it’s revealed that the rankings are dependent on viewers rather than the contestants as well as the system being overhauled to the likes of Isak with his connection to Naomi. As a result, the whole gimmick of popularity becomes redundant and out of control to the player. Instead, I think this shouldn’t have been a route and instead a hidden ending or something accessible early on in the game to make way for an actual good route.

The next route is the greed route which once again has the potential to see how far people are willing to go to screw others to maximise their profits. It was practically begging for a discussion of capitalism. This is made even more apparent when you have the character of Isak who complains about capitalism within society in other parts of the game. There easily could have been a conversation involving Lumi about the effects capitalism has on the environment on the island if people were willing to destroy the island for profit. But this is never explored and instead, we get a narrative about Valerie opening a restaurant. The worst part is the beginning of the route doesn’t make any sense at all. Why capitalise on meals that are made from food that is given to everyone? This could have easily been changed to where the hosts were offering luxurious rewards for a price which would have been an incentive to gamble and screw others over. The worst part though is the game fails to engage players for any of the stakes as the Wireland app isn’t accessible on the phone. As a result, you can’t monitor how much money everyone has, again this could have been a point of conflict between the cast. But instead when people are charging something like €30,000, we as players don’t even know how much money characters have to assess if this will impact them. The ending is also very anticlimactic, I do like the idea of the protagonist dying to demonstrate that plot armour won’t save you in this game. But the way it’s executed leaves much to be desired. It’s a shame that this and the previous route are the easiest to stumble upon as they are significantly the weakest in the game and can make players believe they reflect the quality of the whole game.

The trust route is certainly better than both the lust and greed routes, however, I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s good. The main problem I found from the route is the lack of authority the hosts have over the show. Again only in this route do the hosts decide to punish contestants for being boring by removing privileges. Not only should this threat be present from the beginning of the game, but there is the missed opportunity to do something similar to what Danganronpa V3 does with having a countdown for someone to murder. Even upon the cast boycotting the show until someone “dies”, all of a sudden the hosts disregard removing their privileges again which puts out any potential further tension. Not to mention, the death of Sasha loses all intended impact at the end of the route when it’s revealed to the player that they are alive shortly after the explosion. It was nice to see all the characters be united, but it’s far from being a social thriller as the route feels more akin to the true ending of the game.

Finally is the detective route, this is single-handedly the only route players will be interested in from the promotion of the game. Although the best route, it still suffers from issues. The main one is how hand-held the whole route feels, I’m glad we get access to the island sleuth app which allows us to collect and deduce evidence. However, it is too easy to simply brute force your way through deductions and incorrectly guess answers. The lack of punishment for getting things wrong could have easily led to a bad ending on this route but this wasn’t implemented. Even when it comes to concluding the events that had transpired, there is no minigame to test the player to see if they understand what happened as it is just given to you. Not to mention, these investigation and deduction moments are paced poorly, it’s strange that when asking characters about their testimonies, you have to converse with them twice. It’s also rather silly that you can only converse with one character per time slot in the day. As a result, it can take you up to six days just to get testimony. The treatment of the culprits is another missed opportunity, there was the possibility of having a killer walk around freely which easily could have contributed to tension, but instead, they are cast away and might as well have been killed off. I did enjoy the premise of the last case, but feel like the motivation behind it doesn’t make sense for the parties involved. Not to mention, once that case is wrapped up the game time skips at the very end of the game even though there was enough time for either another murder to occur or for a conversation between Harri and the rest of the cast.

Altogether the game fails to answer many questions players would have about the game. What is the connection between all the contestants? I originally thought it was going to be something along the lines of civilians who are viewed as good in society but have skeletons in their closets. I don’t know if the developers had a theme in mind, but the fact the characters don’t try to deduce it themselves feels odd. Additionally, we don’t get any information about the hosts of the show. Why do they host the show? Did they create the show? How are they able to pull all of this off? There are many questions about them but we never get any answers. The same thing can be said about the show, who is watching? How many are watching? The only time when the reception of the show is brought into light is when Isak is given a gift by a viewer, other than that the game fails to reiterate that this is a game show.

Character problems
For a game that states it’s character-driven, I found a lot of characters to be lacking, especially when you take into consideration how much time you spend with these characters. This stems from the fact that even though you can spend time with the cast in your free time, the majority of the text feels like fluff. The interactions fail to understand the characters' motivations and after obtaining maximum friendships with every character, it feels like we never go beyond the surface level. There were so many things I’d love to know about certain characters but it’s never brought up nor are you able to find out yourself by asking. As a result, I was able to like characters but none of them will stick with me as nothing is done for them to stand out.

I’ll break down the problems I have with every character below:

Harri - For being the protagonist you would think we would get the most information out of him but there is barely anything. He makes references to him being a bus driver and an event that made him lose everything. But the event in question is only brought up in the trust route and he doesn’t even go into detail about it. You would imagine something that almost ruined his life would be spoken about in more detail. Apart from that, Harri is frustrating in that his personality is all over the place for what feels like the route dictates his personality. This is made most apparent during the lust route where he becomes a complete degenerate who thinks it’s perfectly okay to flirt and overstep practically every girl's boundaries. The way he acts is also a complete contradiction as earlier in the game, Harri makes comments about toxic masculinity and misogyny and yet in this route he does the same thing he complains about. I feel bad for people who are exposed to this route because Harri is a complete cunt of a manchild.

Mia - Mia is weird in the sense that it feels like the game wants to treat her as the sidekick to Harri, but in all honestly I found Mia quite unlikable. I understand Mia has good intentions but I dislike how she tries to take control of most situations, like she will complain about the lack of order but fails to realise there are no rules on the island. The way she acts sometimes makes it like her ego is too big, I’m glad characters do call her out on it because there are many situations where she comes across as a dictator on what the group should do. For example, the game tries to make you feel bad for Mia when Gio ends up snapping at her, but I thought she got what she deserved for going into someone else's room and looking at their stuff without permission. But the way the game tries to pose her in a positive light just doesn’t sit right with me.

Daan - I don’t have many problems with Daan except with the whole justice thing in the detective route. The problem is that he admits that killing the culprit is going too far, but then he goes against that at the end of the route.

Valarie - Valarie is easily the most dislikable person in the whole cast. I understand what they were trying to do with her character but when 90% of the game she is a snob that uses Anika for her benefit I’m going to struggle to like her.

Eva - Eva starts as being quite annoying but honestly, I think she is one of the better characters all things considered. Yes, her overuse of slang can be a bit over the top at times but she was easily the character that made me LOL the most while playing. I’m glad she is one of the few characters that isn’t completely one-dimensional.

Francisca - Again another character I think they pulled off quite well. I think the only issue I had with her was in the lust route when she got offended by Harri when he suggested an open relationship. But then in a previous route, she ends up doing that same thing with Sasha and Gio.

Isak - I love Isak, he was easily my favourite character playing through the game as he was entertaining. However, I do think he lacks being serious in certain scenes as he’s very overdramatic and theatrical throughout the whole game which can get tiring. I also have a huge problem as to how there is some sort of relationship he has with Naomi but the game fails to explain said relationship. I theorised he willingly signed himself up for the show and would act like a mole among the group but again this never came to fruition.

Annika - Honestly the sweetest cinnamon bun that needs protecting. I do wish we were given an actual explanation as to why she refers to herself in the third person instead of being hinted towards the fact.

Sasha - I found Sasha to be a very frustrating character, they are way too edgy and overtly sexual for no good reason. It wasn’t ever funny and the constant use of pop culture references doesn’t make sense for them in comparison to Eva. It’s also hard to take Sasha seriously when they try to act all tough but then literally always associate themselves with the two strongest characters in the game. They were also frustrating in the detective route as they complained that Harri was doing a poor job at playing detective but then actively tried to be as unhelpful as possible during investigations. It’s also hypocritical that they want their pronouns to be respected but have no problem using a slur.

Lumi - For the most part I liked Lumi for being a quieter character, it helped to balance out some of the more out-there personalities. The only thing I dislike about Lumi is the way they treat her being Asexual. It’s never really brought up throughout the whole story and the way it’s portrayed at the end of the trust route it feels very lazily put together. Lumi is supposed to be 23 years old and it only occurs to her at the very end of the game that she doesn’t want to engage with the sexual side of the relationship. With how frequently relationships and sex get brought it, it would have been so easy to allow this to be developed but it feels more like an afterthought. Especially when Lumi is used as the choice during the hallucination to get onto the lust route.

Gio - Gio is meant to be a threat as it’s revealed that he has ties to the mafia and from that point forward he becomes the closest thing to a villain within the contestants. The problem is that outside of being physically stronger than everyone and having bursts of anger, he doesn’t pose much of a threat nor make the lives of everyone else worse. Additionally, just like Lumi, the way the writers treat Gio’s sexuality is ignorant at best and offensive at worst. This is because it is shoehorned at the very end of the game without any build-up or foreshadowing. The worst part is that his sexuality could have easily had a compelling story and boosted Gio as a character by containing some amazing character development.

With how the developers treat Lumi and Gio, the audacity of them to advertise the game for diversity is honestly a joke. This is related to how the writers had no problem for Eva, Francisa, and Sasha to exhibit bisexual behaviour but they can’t be bothered to write a character who is asexual or gay. It’s also questionable how it’s only the girls that exhibit this bisexual nature but all of the guys are immune from it.

In conclusion, Inescapable has so much potential to be an incredible story but fails to utilise mechanics to enhance the experience. It turns into a gameshow where anything can happen to a slow, tedious, slog with a large cast of uninteresting one-dimensional characters.