The debut game from Magnetic Realms, "Inescapable" is a Sci-Fi action adventure in which players unravel the mystery uncovered by a remote interplanetary mining operation. What did they find? What threat does it pose? And ultimately, what does it truly mean to be a hero?
I went into Inescapable expecting to like it, but there are just far too many things wrong here. Aesthetically, the game is a mixed bag as the graphics are great, but there is only a single atmospheric track which plays through the whole game regardless of the environment; atmospheric sounds are fine in place of music, but they should be changed up between areas. The game is also very short and I was able to finish it in about two hours, two hours which consisted in very large part of backtracking to one place or another to get a key to open a door to get a key to open another door and so on. Area design is 'ok' and the controls feel solid, though I did run into two spots which were literally 'inescapable' and I had to save, exit, and continue in order to restart at the beginning of the room.
However, the biggest problem with this game is easily the combat; there are only two enemy types, which come in a variety of colors to denote the number of hits they take and if they fire a projectile or not. On top of the lack of variety, nothing about these rather sinister-looking enemies is actually threatening as their bullets barely hurt, any enemies with projectiles are guaranteed to drop armor-repairing crystals, and the non-flying enemies move so slowly that you can easily blast through lines of them without a scratch.
Lastly, there's the plot. It starts off with great potential as there are various factions introduced and there is even some optional world building through banter between the crew. Unfortunately, none of these factions feel fleshed out as much as they should be and the plot starts going in circles at about the halfway mark. This would all still be acceptable though if it wasn't for the ending, which, without giving much away, feels insultingly out of place after having violently blasted my way through dozens of eldritch abominations up to that point.
Inescapable clearly has effort put into it, but it ultimately feels lacking and unpolished.
Placeholder for full review.
So far...
Its metroidvania with classic flavor.
Linux port is good, even 64bit present, works out of the box, without any voodoo with libs and configs.
Even gamepad support is present (quite rare on linux).
In a parallel universe, slightly different than our own, The Bitmap Brothers made a Metroid clone for the Atari ST. Somehow, the game has mysteriously appeared in our side.