The Escapists infiltrates Steam Early Access

The Escapists is a game about breaking out of prison, from the studio that made that game about a heroic potato . Banged up for 30 years for a crime you maybe did commit, The Escapists tasks you with busting out of a fortified penitentiary, using a variety of tools and methods to achieve this. It all sounds rather exciting and open-ended , and it's now on Steam Early Access so we can check for ourselves.

The Escapists is currently available for £6.99, though that price will go up a bit as more features and content is added to the game. For now we can expect a "fully operational", custom-built Early Access prison ("The Fhurst Peak Correctional Facility"), containing a nontet of playable characters, three different jobs to try your hand at (Laundry, Workshop and Metalshop), prison wardens and employment officers to keep you in check, and of course visitors, lots of craftable items and "several ways to escape". The full game should feature multiple jails, more jobs, and even a prison editor so you can make your own.

Here's a recent, rather wonderful trailer showing what the game involves:

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.