Sunday, August 10, 2025
Puzzling Your Way Out
Locking
people up and forcing them to solve various puzzles in order to
escape is such a strangely specific scenario that at first glance it
might seem to be one with a limited design space. However, the enduring
popularity of this subgenre of puzzle game and its ability to
reinvent itself have demonstrated the potential it offers developers.
Often found alongside the Escape Game is the visual novel as a means
of presenting its story since the pairing complement the strengths
and weaknesses of each other. There is a large element of spatial
awareness inherent to Escape Games due to the small confines they
occur in and the need to solve puzzles in this area to progress so
these spaces have a strong personality to them. It is also in these
places that a lot of people cramped in close proximity and they are
all in danger, so paranoia is abound which both sides of the hybrid
take full advantage of to push events and mechanics forwards.
Helping all this along is the slow boil nature of the threat faced by
the characters who are trapped as it is this escalation of narrative
and puzzle complexity which blends them together seamlessly. Lets
solve some convoluted puzzle rooms and find out how this hybrid keeps
the player under lock and key.
Spatial Awareness
Providing
a physicality to its locations through mechanical interactions is
the greatest strength of Escape Games. This is achieved by requiring the player to pay attention to the environmental layout and
the position of objects within it for clues about how to solve the
puzzles. Each space offers various nooks and crannies to investigate
and uncover new items, be they those needed for progression or
optional collectables. As a result the player will end up possessing
an internal map of the rooms in a way which allows them to form
attachments to them when they become associated with the fun
mysteries and the player’s achievements in overcoming them. This is
a beneficial quality in the context of its use of visual novel
elements since it is something the internal focused visual novels can
struggle with and vice versa. By placing the intimate visual novel
narrative within a framework focused on the spaces its characters
occupy, the Escape Game can offer a grounded sense of place to what
might otherwise be an over the top or character centric story. The
main advantage of this merger of external and internal spaces is the
way it can balance out the contrivances inherent in both sides of
this style of game. On the one side the need for the Escape Game to
have restricted spaces to make its gameplay digestible to the player
makes for somewhat absurd locations which the visual novel mitigates
through its protagonist’s fixation on escape and using it to provide the momentum to move from puzzle to another without delay. In order
to justify the situation required for an Escape Game to exist, the
visual novel element has to jump through hoops to construct its
narrative which is not ideal since it pulls it away from being
believable and it is here the physicality of the Escape Games helps
ground the story within objects and functions the player sees in
their everyday lives.
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| Each room will become familiar as it is deeply explored |
Perhaps the single most prominent and
influential titles using the Escape Game mechanics are the Zero
Escape games, so let’s look there for some examples of this
relationship in practice. 999 choses to begin with a relatively normal
setting of a large ship which offers an easy to understand reference
point for the spaces where gameplay will take place and makes them
easier to parse when looking at. This helps cushion the more out
there aspects of the story as they are placed in a location which
keeps them within a real world context so they never stray too far
from the believable. In the second entry, Virtues’ Last Reward, the
location is now a series of sci-fi rooms and corridors and these lack
any features the player will be familiar with so they have to lean more on
their physicality to sell themselves. Here the visual novel narrative
has to pick up some of the slack with the character’s personalities
and internal drama in order to add some relatability to the
experience. Of course it still has the same complex and over the top
story as 999 but the change in emphasis helps cover it up as the
burden of convincing the player of the settings legitimacy is more
evenly spread and this makes the issue less pronounced.
Hotbed Of Emotion
Being
confined is not a pleasant experience especially when forced to solve
puzzles with your life on the line. As such it is believable that
emotions would run high in this situation and cause people to act in an impulsive manner and lash out or grow suspicious of those around
them. This broader expectation of what is reasonable for the
characters to do in an Escape Game is perfect for the sort of
intimate stories visual novels thrive on. It allows for the thoughts
of its cast to be presented in a more direct manner where what makes
them tick is laid bare to not only the player but also those around
them. Leaning into these traits does run the risk of become a bit too
on the nose so this is where the pacing of the puzzles and mysteries
of the Escape Game is key since they offer a unique means of blending
in lighter character moments and banter in off hand comments or
instructive clues. Each one is a small window into the less serious
side of the cast which adds some much needed levity to take the edge
of the relentless drama and reminds the player that they are dealing
with normal people in an extraordinary situation. Managing the flow
between the highs and lows of emotion while making them varied is the
ultimate effect of this splitting of the narrative load. The two
sides have the room to do what they do best without having to overly
compromise their strengths.
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| When things go wrong people tend to not think clearly |
ABYSS OF THE SACRIFICE makes for a good
presentation of what this emphasis on emotion can result in. The
disaster which is occurring around the cast places them in direct
danger from the collapse of their underground home and the rapid
depletion of their remaining food and water so they are all
understandably stressed. This makes them lash out at the other girls
or slip up and says something revealing about themselves or the
mysteries of the setting. The tone of the overall game is pretty
gloomy as the cast struggles to find a way out while solving the
puzzles around them. Rather than directly adding levity in the form
of commentary, like Virtues Last Reward, the Escape Game mechanical
sections instead act as direct breaks for the player to cool down in
so the drama does not become overwhelming. There is an awareness of
how inherently absurd the whole situation is and the title is more
than willing to make jokes at its own expense to break this tension
in both gameplay and story through character quirks and out of place
items. However, these are used sparingly so as to not break the
overall tone so the dire nature of events still remains front and
centre.
Nowhere To Run
Restricting
where the characters and player can go and what they can interact with changes how they perceive events and mechanics. It is a form of
segregation which lends itself to an experience where a fine degree
of control can be exercised without it coming across as the game
being invasive about what the player can and cannot do. This
restraint is both a blessing and curse in terms of the type of
gameplay and stories it can offer. There is a reason many Escape
Games lean into elaborate narratives and it is due to the repetitive
nature of the situation weakening interest over the long term so a
slowly unveiling complex plot works wonders to counter that drain. On
the mechanical end there is the need to make each new puzzle area
have its own exclusive gimmick and visual style in order to provide a
feeling of progress and avoid the pitfall of familiarity. These
design limitations are responsible for much of the memorable favour
of Escape Games and their combination with visual novel elements
allows for the swapping of emphasis where characters and mechanics share in the player's feelings of uncovering a complex series of truths. A more
integrated method of narrative presentation would struggle to create
the necessary divide to avoid the sense of repetition since they
occupy the same spaces in a direct manner which can unflatteringly
highlight this issue.
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| Ships, why is it always a ship? |
This format is not exclusive to the long-form
titles like those of Zero Escape and it can be seen is
smaller examples like the 3DS exclusive Parascientific Escape series.
These games were short experience with playtimes between five and
nine hours so cannot afford to spend the same time on building up
plot elements as its longer cousins. Despite this limitation it still
captures much of the same style of elaborate narrative beats in miniature forms as it also gives an overview of its fantastical setting.
The fact the first game revolves around the protagonist being trapped
on a cruise ship makes the influence 999 has had on it clear and it
plays out like a more direct take on 999’s story. Its much smaller
cast results in its twists being more immediately obvious since there
is only so much misdirection it can do so instead the title
leans into the drama leading up the reveal to ensure engagement.
Escaping the ship is the context provided to the mechanics of puzzle
solving and so each new area offers a different part of the vessel to
help add new layers to it as the cast struggle against the obstacles
in their path. The overarching psychic powers of the protagonist
support the variety of the gimmicks since they are decidedly distinct
from the standard gameplay of the Escape Game.
Conclusion
The
scenarios baked into the identity of the Escape Game merge well with
the presentation and restrictions of visual novels to create a
complementary hybrid. By placing emphasis on the spaces the
characters occupy, the Escape Game can provide a sense of grounded
reality to a narrative while being given the emotional resonance it
lacks in return. The inherent restrictions on events and locations
necessitated by being confined to a location lead to the hybrid
compensating with elaborate stories and a conveyor belt of gimmicks
weaving in and out of each other to keep the player engaged. People
do not like the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped so feelings
naturally run high in an Escape Game and the internal focus of a
visual novel can present this tension in an intimate way. This is a
hybrid which makes very specific demands of its two parts, but should
this meet a developer’s needs then there is no better combination
to explore these ideas.
