Room Escape Artist

How 2 Escape is a point-and click game with split information played by 2 players on different devices.

Format

Style of Play:

• Point-and-click

Who is it For?

• Puzzle lovers
• Best for players with at least some experience

Required Equipment: computer, mobile device, pen & paper

You need two devices to play this game. Johann’s character could use a mobile device; Emy’s character required the player to have one of the following platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X or Series S

No internet connection required, except potentially for voice chat if your partner is remote.

Recommended Team Size: exactly 2

Play Time: The game clock varies for each level, ranging from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Our play time was around 6 hours total.

Price: Normally $14.99 for one player, app for second player is free

Booking: purchase and play at your leisure

Description

We played as the siblings Emy and Johann with the task of helping Emy escape a runaway train. One player guided Emy throughout the train using standard video game controls and interacting with objects. The other player, acting as Johann, was not on the train but rather communicating with Emy via phone. Johann had many documents and tools in his possession that he could use to help them both understand her environment better. The only constraint was to not view each other’s devices, and it was up to us how we communicated in real life (e.g. talk in the same room, communicate via video chat, etc.).

Christina Rohlf’s Reaction

I loved playing How 2 Escape. I played as Johann, who was using an app on his cellphone to help his sister Emy escape from a speeding train. The companion app is available on iOS, Android, and Steam. I opted to use Steam for my playthrough and I believe the larger screen size from using a PC enhanced my experience.

Throughout the game, I had copious amounts of information (delivery schedules, wiring diagrams, pictures of fruit, etc.) and worked with the player controlling Emy to determine the correct piece of information to pass along. Every puzzle relied on information transfer (and often multiple passes of information) to find and input a solution. While my husband Kurtis and I played this game from different rooms of the house, shouting our information back and forth (much to the confusion of our pets), How 2 Escape could easily be played fully remote using a voice chat feature.

The game consisted of 7 distinct train cars. We started playing around 5pm on a Friday and were so engrossed and having such a great time that we looked up at 11pm having just beaten the entire game thinking we should probably figure out something for dinner. Otherwise, this game could easily be divided up into 7 sittings of about 60 minutes each.

In general, the puzzles were logical and the flow of information made sense; however, there was one puzzle in the last train car which I found frustrating and let us try out the built-in hint system for the game. The hint system operated on coins found throughout the train cars and offered a small nudge per coin. While we had plenty of coins by this point in the game, we did need to use 3 coins to get new information that we hadn’t figured out. All in all, How 2 Escape was an extremely fun game and I would highly recommend this to any escape room enthusiasts looking for a fun 2-player activity.

Kurtis Rohlf’s Reaction

How 2 Escape was well worth the price and provided a train-load of fun. We played the full game in one sitting (about 6 hours), but there were places between each train car (level) to stop and take a break. I played the role of Emy who was trapped on the train and had to reach the front to stop it before it crashed. The movement and interaction controls used to complete puzzles were clean and allowed the challenge to reside in solving the puzzles, not interacting with the environment. The hint system was coin-based and gave incremental information to help guide the players in the correct direction. The variety of puzzles kept How 2 Escape engaging and interesting. Our team struggled with the final puzzle, but found all of the other solutions logical and straightforward.

Sarah Mendez’s Reaction

At 6 hours of game play, How 2 Escape offered a quality experience for gamers and non-gamers alike, maintaining an impressive division of responsibilities throughout. As a non-video-gamer, I usually worry that escape video games might require too much precision from me in navigating the environment. Here, I had the perfect option of interacting with static materials on my phone while my gamer teammate could navigate the 3D world on the PlayStation. For teams with more equal interests, the game also provided junctures where players could switch roles without undermining the split-info conceit. We were also quite pleased at how reliably we each had something to do for 95% of the game. In fact, if one of us was temporarily twiddling our thumbs, we quickly learned that that person surely had something left to uncover. Rarely have I seen a game strike this balance so well, especially with such a large number and variety of puzzles.

The game wasn’t perfect, though. We thought it faltered in the last half hour for several reasons: misleading feedback, a mismatch of complexity to the moment, and a new last-minute dynamic with unclear instructions. We also found the hints to be too simplistic for our difficulties, forcing us to rely on the walkthrough to make progress. Lastly, the ending didn’t fulfill the narrative build-up that had been painstakingly woven throughout the game.

Overall, though, our enjoyment far outweighed our frustrations. We looked forward to continuing this game over several evenings. It’s an excellent choice for 2-player teams who enjoy the communication challenges of split-info games.