Without Escape (PS4, PS Vita)

EastAsiaSoft's budget indie "Without Escape" is a game that will either try your patience with it's many puzzles, or have you so intrigued by it's underlying mystery that you'll go to any length to finish it. At it's heart it is a point and click horror indie that places you in the shoes of a kid whose parents are supposedly off visiting with their own parents. You arrive to an empty home late at night, have a cheap lasagna dinner, and go to bed thinking that all is right with the world. At precisely 2:45am you wake up to an odd noise suspecting a burglar, but find instead a house in slight disarray with a new mysterious painting that gives off odd vibes when you look at it. From there you point, and click your way through each room, and it's contents looking for items and information to get you to the next point in your search for explanations. Your immediate area of interest is small with blocked off entrances, and things that require other things to get into. The more you discover, and unlock the more the world around you changes, and morphs. Ultimately taking you, the character of the story, on an otherworldly journey into a Lovecraftian horror situation. What lies in wait is anyone's guess ...

Gameplay in this five dollar indie horror is basic. By guiding and clicking with a magnifying glass that has an "X" in the center when an item isn't able to be investigated, and a blank center when it is you will find what you need to progress. This involves all the usual puzzle types including basic searching, switching, unlocking, and puzzle solving. Once you find an item through said puzzles it will be placed in your "R2" menu that can be accessed via the "R2" shoulder button for browsing sake. Simply pressing "X" on a searchable point of interest with the items in inventory will cause any relevant item to automatically activate, and do what it is intended to do. Obviously there is a set order in which to progress your investigation through the items gifted through given puzzles, and it will take a lot of backtracking to trigger certain events in the tale that is told solely through textual subtitles.

The presentation in "Without Escape" is one molded with realism. Including image stills of locations, and some animated features that activate when you interact with them using the point and click magnifying glass (X). The deeper you get into the plot through progression the more the world will change around you. Going from a seemingly normal home to a twisted hellish Lovecraftian underworld teeming with gore, and unspeakable horror. As your situation intensifies, and changes so too does the atmospheric music that plays in the background. Along with the music comes environmental sounds such as white noise for a television, or running water from a faucet among other things. It is a hauntingly ambient experience that captures, not only the lonely nature of your situation, but the eeriness of the environments you encounter. For a five dollar title it's not all that bad, presenation-wise.

The Verdict ...

To be honest I was unable to complete the game. I got to a frustrating point where the number puzzle solution wasn't directly found in plain sight within the game. I tried adding numbers, re-arranging numbers, and just entering the only numbers the game had shown me. The only thing I didn't try is using the quoted reference, and doing a real world search online to try, and figure it out. It was this lack of clear direction that ultimately frustrated me enough to make me stop. Sadly, this happened fairly early into the game. I felt that the early puzzles were doable to an extent to begin with, but that some early instances seemed more like something you'd encounter deeper into the game. The cryptic natures of the clue were a little too cryptic in that situation, and I just gave up over it.

That being said I know there will be someone online to provide a walkthrough guide at some point, and if you are in it for the PSN trophies there are some to be had. The story itself seemed intriguing enough in a slow burn kind of way, and I imagine had I gotten past my in-game roadblock it might have gotten even more intriguing. As I said in the initial paragraph though that is this game's big dilemma. It will either frustrate you to a point that you give up, or it will intrigue you enough to keep on going until it's finished. That's going to be up to you. For me I just couldn't figure it out, and thus I cannot tell you"yes" or "no" in regards to a final verdict. Just know that it seems to be properly done outside of the puzzle hiccup I ran into.