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Escape: Sierra Leone is a single-player exploration-based survival first-person game. Focused around complete freedom and interacting with a vibrant world, it takes place on an island chain based loosely off of the real life Banana Islands, along the coast of Sierra Leone. There are approximately 21 square kilometers of terrain to explore, fight, survive and escape from. You start with no weapons, no supplies, no idea of where to go - getting those is up to you. No magic quest arrows pointing where to go, no forced objectives or missions.

Set during the 1997 civil war, the main antagonists are the Revolutionary United Front, a notorious group rebelling against the government. The RUF have occupied the Banana Islands and are on a hunt for diamonds; recruiting who they can and killing, maiming, or enslaving those they can't.

You play as a civilian trying to escape the island. Throughout the game, you are forced to make a series of choices that will eventually lead to you making your escape. Everything from how to approach your attempted escape, to how you interact with other people can have an affect on how everything plays out in the end. The game is totally open and you are never given "quests" or "objectives" beyond simply escaping. You may have encounters during the game in which you are asked to help someone, but these are completely open, you can fulfill their request, or simply ignore them, or even kill them, if you wish.

In the 1.0 release, there are going to be at least four methods of escape, and a minimum of 8 different endings, influenced by choices you make throughout the game. Both of those numbers are likely to rise as development progresses. A compact and simple inventory system will make you think about what food, ammo, guns, or items you want to carry. Combat, while not mandatory in any way, is fairly realistic and very brutal. Each bullet hit or wound causes an appropriate animation and sound effect, for both NPCs and the player.

Key Features:

  • Seamlessly scavenge the entire island for supplies you need to survive, from a banana to an AK-47. No invisible walls or loading screens.
  • Engage in immersive and realistic combat... or don't, if you're the sneaky type.
  • Around 21 square kilometers of hand-painted landscape and vegetation gives you a ton of area to explore.
  • Using a simple and intuitive 12 slot inventory system, make the hard call on which items to keep and which to leave behind.
  • Realistic bullet physics that factors in gravity, wind, and speed into every individual round, all of which can effect penetration, damage dealt, and accuracy.
  • Death comes in more forms than bullets, avoid disease, dehydration, starvation, car crashes, wildlife, and falls.
  • 24 hour day/night cycle with a weather system that includes rain of varying strengths, wind, and a 28-phase moon cycle.
  • Discover and protect safehouses, they are your only chance to save your game and serve as a good spot to stockpile supplies or clean weapons.
  • Find and fuel different kinds of vehicles, from a diesel powered truck to a gas powered motorboat, walking won't get you anywhere fast!
  • Interact with the environment; from picking a lock, to opening a door, to cooking food on a campfire, to chasing a school of fish, to hunting the local wildlife, there are many ways you are involved in the dynamic world around you.
  • Get lost in the thick jungle, or stroll around the sweeping beaches.
  • Detailed weapon handling including loading and unloading loose rounds into magazines, cleaning your gun, clearing jams, and the option to "quick reload", which drops your old mag on the ground, but reloads faster.
  • Explore an unforgiving, although deceptively pretty island. Never forget how easily the island can and will kill.
  • Hand placed loot allows for a logical placement of items, instead of leaving it up to a random spawning system.
  • No hand-holding or magical GPS-like maps or arrows to push you to success, it's all you!
  • Very limited HUD and a focus on immersion and realism. The HUD is only visible when you prompt it to appear.
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After several years of development and an engine change, I feel like the project has finally gotten to the point where I'm comfortable releasing it to the public. While the game is generally pretty polished for an Early Access project, there is still a lot of content that hasn't been added yet, and some placeholder assets.

If you want to check out the Steam page for the game, you can do so HERE. It's 10% off for the first week (until December 12) as a thank you to early supporters.

To watch the first 4 minutes of day one in Sierra Leone, check out the video below:

The gameplay mechanics are mostly there. They do need some fine tuning, but everything from eating, to shooting, to piloting vehicles is more or less in. You can buy items from shopkeepers, harvest meat from animals you kill, or partake in hundreds of other various interactions with the world. I do want to add more to it, but patching bugs and optimization take a front seat, which leads into my next point.

Graphically, it's getting pretty good looking, however optimization is something I need to work on over the next few months. You will need a pretty decent rig to run it well, I recommend an Nvidia 970 GPU and i5 quad core CPU or better. You can scale it down, but I need to optimize the lower settings. Currently they don't do much in regards to improving FPS, with very the lowest settings only saving about 10 FPS versus the very high settings. That being said, they do make the game look awful, so I'm not sure why there aren't more performance improvements. Here's a screenshot on my computer, I was getting about 45 FPS on my 970 and i5.

Steam Store Screenshots

Thanks for the support everyone, whether you've been here since the Escape: Paradise days, or just stumbled across this post now. I've enjoyed working with the gaming community over the past decade, and hope to keep on doing so for another 10 years!

Escape: Sierra Leone Development Update 2

Escape: Sierra Leone Development Update 2

News 2 comments

A second update on how the project is going. I now have a release date for Early Access, and some cool new screenshots and videos!

Unreal Engine 4 Development Update 1

Unreal Engine 4 Development Update 1

News

With a new engine and new year, lets see where E:SL is currently at since the process of switching engines started.

Escape: Sierra Leone is Moving!

Escape: Sierra Leone is Moving!

News 1 comment

Due to several hangups with Cryengine 3, Escape: Sierra Leone is moving to Unreal Engine 4.

A No-BS Update on How Things Are Going

A No-BS Update on How Things Are Going

News 4 comments

Well, it's been almost a year since I managed to get the Greenlight. I can't believe time has gone so fast and that I've managed so little regarding this...

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E:SL Alpha Demo V0.1 (PART 2 OF 2)

E:SL Alpha Demo V0.1 (PART 2 OF 2)

Demo 23 comments

You will also need the files in this .zip for the game to work, please make sure you download this as well as the Part 1 files. Then, extract and merge...

E:SL Alpha Demo V0.1 (PART 1 OF 2)

E:SL Alpha Demo V0.1 (PART 1 OF 2)

Demo 16 comments

The free alpha demo for Escape: Sierra Leone. This is an early build designed to give players a chance to try the game. It's pretty rough and unpolished...

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AltoSaxon912
AltoSaxon912

Nice to know the project's not dead. I remember having fun tooling around in a pre-alpha build a year or two ago

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Slayer_2 Creator
Slayer_2

Thanks, it's changed a LOT since that build, Unreal Engine 4 has let me do a lot of crazy things. There is a possible beta build coming soon, although I may do early access, still have to see how it goes.

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Guest
Guest

how do you install the game what do i do wine you get to enter Bin32 or Bin64 what do i do there

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Slayer_2 Creator
Slayer_2

There should be an executable for each type of game. Use 64 bit if you have a 64 bit OS, or 32 bit if you're running a 32 bit OS.

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Guest
Guest

sorry 32 bit version doesnt work!!! its missing a file i emailed you before about it! its the ximput1_4 dll and without it there is no way to play! the 64bit version works fine but i dont have 64bit version going by what others say can you please fix it???

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Slayer_2 Creator
Slayer_2

Send me a PM and I'll shoot you a link to my email address so I can send that file along for you. Just so you know, the initial release of the game will only support x64 although 32 bit support is planned down the road.

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trollman2000
trollman2000

this is how my game looks like can someone help me Youtu.be

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Slayer_2 Creator
Slayer_2

That is odd, I'll try to reproduce it, can I have your system specs?

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