Escape the Arcade
Escape the Arcade is described as a “casual escape room game.” Built with Panels (the motion comic engine used to power The Botanist and also Pick Pack Pup’s cutscenes), Escape the Arcade opens with you shrinking down and getting trapped inside a crane game. Luckily for you, there’s a whole new world to explore in there, and each room is its own little themed environment.
The art style is a little Adventure Time, and each room is packed with details. Which is good, because to get through them, you’ll need to closely inspect those details to figure out what you need to do next. Some are fairly straightforward, like finding hidden letters that spell a password, but some have programming language hiding secrets, or counting puzzles. Each room has a different trick to solve it, like a real puzzle room (I did one in real life once – I liked this game a lot more). There was this electronic puzzle toy mentioned in Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design that I just can NOT remember the name of that had a similar “every level has different rules” gimmick. (Please let me know in the comments if you know what it is – I know we have some game design students here.) It’s cool to never use the same part of your brain twice in a game! It feels good!
It's about an hour long and perfect for the right kind of person. There’s even a hint system if you get stuck on a puzzle, like in Professor Layton. Here, though, you don’t need to find/spend hint coins – the developers just wanted anyone to be able to finish the game and see all there was to offer. There are stages of hints: from broad top-level ones, to more direct, down to the game just telling you the solution, so it’s up to you how much nudging you need to solve the puzzle. I did have to use one hint, near the end, but I probably would’ve been able to figure it out myself if I put the game down for a while and came back later. But I wanted to keep going! It’s clear why I’ve never beaten any of the Monkey Island games, despite enjoying them up until I get stuck and never playing again.
Escape the Arcade is a nice little journey. Took me about an hour to get through, and it’s the kind of game that you could maybe play again in a year or so after you forget the puzzle solutions. And the feeling of scrolling through the environments and comic story with the crank, searching for any tiny clues? We just don’t get that anywhere but on the Playdate.