6 people found this review helpful
Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 6.0 hrs on record
Posted: 2 Aug, 2018 @ 6:02pm
Updated: 2 Aug, 2018 @ 6:07pm

3rd level -- Fort Rattlesnake

Day 1: Grind up INT to max so I can craft everything. Show up at regular events like showering and meals to learn the routine. I drape bedsheets on my cell bars to see how long it takes to be cleared.

Day 2: Find a store-room with a note inside saying nobody goes in there. I dig a hole through the floor and climb down into an abandoned mine.

Day 3: Start doing tons of favours for easy cash. Quite a few require delivering items, so I just wait till everyone is together at roll call and make tons of money in the space of a minute. My time is otherwise spent rummaging for duct tape and wood since it's vital for crafting and upgrading.

Day 4: I'm rolling in cash because RNG means lots of favours are tied together. That, and nobody is selling duct tape or wood because it also depends on RNG rolls, but it's the only thing I need.

Day 5: I need to be present to avoid suspicion, but discovered I only need to be seen in the area to get an alibi. I stop eating and showering to save time and immediately leave roll call once it marks me present.

Day 6: I beat up the woodworking guy to get him fired as a favour, then steal his job anyway cause I need money. I have unlimited wood from work which means easier crafts and free supporting beams for my tunnel. Downside is that using the work bin gives wood/wood/glue, and glue is useless to me.

Day 7: The courtyard floor is covered in glue tubes -- it's not illegal contraband so the staff don't care, but I still need to take one for every two bits of wood. The shovel and pickaxe will only take duct tape, 40 tubes of industrial glue obviously isn't sticky enough. I get paid for woodworking so I stop doing favours as they are annoying: even if you have 40 posters in storage, if Jeff wants a poster you are required to pick up the specific items it spawns and craft a new one to complete the favour.

Day 8: Despite hiding my contraband in a secret compartment, a guard yells that he's found me out. I check the hidden drawer, my stuff is still there. He reports me and the prison is on max lockdown, so I can't leave my cell. My cellmate comes in, unlocking the door and letting a guard dog in, which immediately mauls me. I leave solitary confinement to find my hidden stache is still there.

Day 9: When you dig, there's a mechanic that fills your inventory with the soil. This has priority over logic as I'm not allowed to dump the soil anywhere in the abandoned mine. Progress continues to be slowed by checking desks and smugglers for duct tape and flushing soil down toilets.

Day 10: I haven't eaten or showered for days, should be coated in dirt and soil, and hide in a cell with filthy sheets covering all the bars. The guards finally get suspicious of me because I dig instead of going to work, triggering a maximum lockdown. I drop my vital tools and run for the entry hole, but the guard dogs have already jumped down and maul me. A medic retrieves me and removes contraband items from me: 40kg of soil. Despite being entered by a medic and three dogs my tunnel remains unfound. When I get back from solitary confinement I see the guards finally removed the sheets from my cell bars.

Day 11: I only poke my face through the door at every event then run back to digging, then when I'm exhausted I run back to bed to nap my energy up. I don't need duct tape any more as my shovel will last, which massively expidites the escape process.

Day 12: I finish digging and climb out. The actual fleeing takes three seconds. It would have taken less time and been more entertaining to just watch The Shawshank Redemption.

Game is entertaining enough, but it has a very weird concept of logic and really stupid priorities; it honestly comes across as very buggy sometimes, and makes it look like the game hasn't been tested enough. You can beat a map almost any way you want, but if it's not one of a few ways they had in mind then it becomes an almost Sisiphean grind. If you decided to dig out through the mine you've heard about, then you've got a full real-life hour ahead of running back and forth, saving up money and rechecking the same ten desks for the four items you need, crafting two tools and upgrading them twice, combining them to make the only tool that can dig quickly and reliably without snapping right away, stopping due to exhaustion and to dump more soil because your character refuses to litter in an abandoned mine, peeking in a different room every hour so you're not noted as absent, then running back to the grind again.

As far as objectives go, the game will give you a specific checklist and demand you do it exactly right to complete it, which is incredibly difficult sometimes. Say someone wants a prison mace of soap and a sock: if you open the drawer with the objective soap and find a sock there too, the game will not accept a craft of them and the favour will not be completable if you use up that soap -- you NEED to grab the specific soap and specific sock that goes with it, even if it's across the map. You need to do things exactly right routinely or be punished for it, when a little leeway is possible by simply assuming people will want to take the most efficient route in a crafting system.

In a nutshell: it appears very unpolished, and it's too repetitive and tedious and buggy to recommend. I'd avoid it unless it's on sale or part of a pack.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award