Ah, I hope we’re all still very drunk or now regretting our decisions yesterday. For those in the UK, I’m referring to the elections and for those elsewhere, I’m referring to The Game Awards. I, for one, am regretting choices made to write this and the piece on those awards last night. A bit like last Tuesday when I found a pregnancy test wrapped in toilet paper behind the toilet. I’m still awake a day later, a couple bucks shorter, and don’t know how any of it happened. However, it is time for the next free game on the Epic Games Store.

The Escapists is a game about escaping a prison run by Jim Sterling, he’s probably in his office yelling about microtransactions in Fallout 76 anyway, he won’t mind. Unlike last week, I’m not joking in that claim, it is one of the few Kickstarter games I think did well in making something fun without “corrupting” itself when it was funded and overfunded. Asking for only £3,000 and getting just over seven thousand pounds, it got double the amount needed from 851 backers. It still feels relatively small, yet enjoyable.

That said, I did say I’d mention the PS4 port and how awful the controller support is last week. I guess it wouldn’t feel as bad if the game wasn’t focused so much on the speed that a controller makes it cumbersome to do anything with. Grabbing someone, hiding the dead bodies of your cellmates, and shiv-ing a guard to death isn’t the type of escape Morgan Freeman had in mind when Andy left. The entire game is about your timing, your ability to do chores, steal uniforms, and half-inch keys.

Every morning you wake up, go to early morning roll call/cell tossing time, have breakfast; then depending on the prison you’ll have free time, work time, or something else. The entire game is about a strict schedule and time management, you have to find the flaws in those to escape. It is a wonderful premise, and the execution is brilliant. To compare my lover, The Escapists is a lot like Dark Souls: Every death, or failure, is a lesson. Caught holding a shiv? You’ll notice when or where to drop it when you need to. Need to store items before your cell is tossed? You’ll learn from mistakes.

All week, among many other games I’ve been playing, I’ve delved back into the game because it was recently a Twitch Prime deal. With that I’ve been trying to make my own prisons in the map editor, figuring out map design, and generally swearing to the gods of game design; I’m sure some think that’s Hideo Kojima. Now, even with the added map editor and sequel released, The Escapists is one of the best games of the decade.

This week’s free game is The Escapists by Mouldy Toof Studios and Team 17. It is currently available to download and keep through the Epic Games store, and is; if the last couple of paragraphs don’t tell you this enough, quite good and more than worth a moment of your time. It is available until Thursday, December 19th, so next week.

The reason I’m quite long with making that clear is the vague nature of next week’s article. For these last few, I’ve been able to prep for and have some form of an idea on what to say about the games by the time you’re able to download the games. While most weeks we have an idea of what will be coming next, the phrase across the store right now is “Tune-in Dec 19 for more free games.” So it seems just as we are preparing to head into a break to be with our families over Christmas, the Epic Games store is going to kill me. Enjoy!

Editor’s Note: The Wolf Among Us Season 1 is also available until the 19th on the Epic Games Store for Free. 

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