It's one thing to find yourself locked in a pleasant little tea room or bakery shop, with cookies and coffee on hand and a refreshing breeze wafting through the window. It's another to suddenly awaken in the depths of an ancient temple, your mind muddled by time, the stench of decay thick in the air. The only clues to your identity are a series of hastily-scrawled notes strewn about your cell; your only chance of escape is through an impenetrable stone door. Welcome to the world of Psionic Games, masters of the horror-themed point-and-click game. Escape Eternity is their latest escape game for browsers and Android devices, but this time, there's a three-dimensional twist: Your murky, claustrophobic tomb is rendered in glorious 3D in Unity. You'll still navigate using your mouse, clicking on objects and arrows to move around the room. The orange, "i"-shaped button in the upper right corner holds your inventory, where you can click on items to either use them or examine them. Peer deep into every nook and cranny of your grim surroundings, even when hideous things hide within, and keep a close watch for even the tiniest scrap of paper. Someone might have wanted to trap you here, but someone else seems to want you to run free...
Escape Eternity's developer freely admits that game is somewhat experimental, and was created as much as an exercise in Unity programming as anything else. As such, the game does have a few rough edges and technical issues. The game lags slightly when moving from view to view, and the location of your inventory is not immediately obvious. The fully 3D room means that items and objects are visible from multiple viewpoints in the area, but they can usually only be picked up or interacted with in specific views, which feels like an unnecessary holdover from traditional, 2D, Flash-based room escapes. But both the room escape and horror fundamentals here are solid, as you would expect from the creator of the Killer Escape games. There's no changing cursor, but just mousing over certain items will show a description of them at the top of the screen; these descriptions usually tell you whether you can take a closer look or not. The real-time 3D room makes for an especially atmospheric place to be trapped, and even allows for the game to have full animations! The puzzles are simple but logical; the solutions have an eerie delivery. And despite its relatively short length, the game has a mythos all its own; it's satisfying to discover, and provides a heaping helping of Lovecraftian spookiness. Escape Eternity may not be perfect, but it promises even bigger and better things in the future. Here's hoping Psionic brings a few more macabre rooms to the third dimension!
Escape Eternity (Android, Android Tablet)
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Stupid easy puzzles. Major pixel hunt to find the clues.
Moving around felt... odd. Every time you click an arrow to turn, or zoom in or out, your view initially rushes in that direction unnaturally fast. It then spends the next two seconds or so, very slowly aligning to a specific spot. You can't interact with anything until this very slow adjustment is done.
It feels like driving twice the speed limit through a parking lot, only to spend a full minute slowly pulling into an empty space.
This might be vaguely playable if you could see more. And mute the annoying as hell SFX too.
Are there any obvious clues other than
the 2 capstones to position on the floor
?
very nice, but very easy and very short :(
Much patience, not too much cleverness, required for this one. I thought there were a few moments where the Unity 3D added but mostly it seemed gratuitous?
no hurry but I can't when the walkthrough is out :)
I liked it. It could use brightness and sound control options though. My only problems are relatively minor:
1. The first corpse I found was referred to as the second, and the the first pile of sand was referred to as "another."
2. I couldn't find things half the time because it was so dark. (Yes I had my brightness up all the way on my laptop of course).
3. I escaped without finding the first note??? I'd have liked to know what was on that, especially if it was backstory.
(Sorry, I mean to say the brightness/sound issues ARE more important than the other things I mentioned, which were relatively minor)
My experience was frustrating - it took me ten minutes to realize that there were notes hidden around the room that were necessary to solve the puzzles. Also, these notes were nearly impossible to find, except the first one and the one
inside the coffin once you get it open.
I had to use the walkthrough just to find out where the other four were.
The difficulty in this game wasn't the puzzles, but in pixel hunting to find the notes - especially since the notes are literally puzzle solutions instead of hints in the right direction. No work required as long as you can read English and find those pesky, practically invisible notes.
Also, the "captions" that show when you click on or mouse over on object were alright, except that it would have been helpful to see a "you picked up an object" type message when something gets added to your inventory. I had the sound off and didn't even know I had found something until I desperately opened my inventory to figure out what I hadn't tried yet. Alternatively, an onscreen inventory sidebar would meet the same need.
To the developer: A good first effort visually - you're on the right track! If you could include just a bit more light to see the notes or hide them out of the way but still visible locations, add some more user friendly inventory features, and write less obvious hints/answers within the game, you could pull off a visually AND intellectually pleasing escape.
Like Kanna I also
escaped without getting the first note. Can someone tell us what it said?
I showed up way late for this graveyard party, but in case anyone else was wondering, the first note reads as follows:
You must read this note and if you are still confused then find the others and they will help you to escape this eternity of sleep.
You are an entity from before mankind walked the earth, you can kill a man with a look, flatten a fortress with a wave of your hand, spread disease and famine wherever you walk. But your powers will be low until you once again feel the sunlight burning upon your skin, recharging your mystical powers.
You are eternal and it is said you are spawn of the dark ones, the ones from the deep, ruled by he whose name shall not be mentioned, he who sleeps under the sea.
Mankind locked you within this tomb but I, your loyal servant and worshipper provided the means to escape this place from within. You shall once again walk the earth and rule it, dominating mankind and forcing them to yield unto you.
I have hidden 6 powerful spheres within your treasures that possess the power to lift the door and allow you to escape. I had to hide the means to escape from the constructors of your tomb else they may have discovered my intentions to set you free to walk amongst them once again.
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