Risk Subway Escape

FIRST TRAIN

OUTSIDE THE TRAIN

FIRST TRAIN

DRIVER'S COMPARTMENT

SECOND TRAIN

FIRST TRAIN

SECOND TRAIN

OUTSIDE SECOND TRAIN

1)Who are you? Maybe you purposefully want to make the player feel like they're the character, but there are dangers to doing that when you don't give the player the power to make any choices because it doesn't really give you a sense of being anyone at all then.

The key moment for me here is when you heal the boy. There's something very sterile about it, especially once you take his dog and then later when you don't even take him with you. What kind of a person would act this way?

Many adventure games give you a sense of character by letting you click around the environment and hear what the character has to say about things. In this way you can build out a personality. Make me care about the person I'm playing and I'm much more likely to become invested in the game. This simple feature can do more than just tell you what your character is thinking though...

2)It can also help you to build out the world. Where are you? What is the context for the game. Okay, obviously we know we're in a subway and that there was some kind of accident. But when the game ends we don't really know anymore than that. Simple descriptions as the player clicks on things give you a chance to drop clues and draw the player further into the world with little details that flesh things out.

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I certainly understand the desire to maybe keep things simple or even to purposefully tell a story without much in-game text, but in my opinion giving the game world and character more depth is one of the best ways to draw someone into a game.

This game is one of the nicer-looking in the batch. Your start screen and logo look wonderfully polished and made me feel hopeful about the game itself, and in the the looks department, it really didn't disappoint. The environments were great, and I really enjoyed the visual effects you had. The flickering was a very nice touch. It did a great job of setting the scene as a place that was not quite in working order, and made the backgrounds feel really alive. The little touches like the smoke and sparks worked very well, too. And the inventory with the closeable backpack was quite nice.

On the not-so-awesome side, the humans (dead and alive) looked unnatural, as did the dog. It wasn't enough to ruin the game, but everything else looked so great that it was a little noticeable. And I felt that the game could have benefited from some transition effects when the player uses an item and changes things. When the fire just disappears, or the dog isn't there at all when getting the keys, or the ghosts and spider are there one frame and gone the next, that looks a little off. You don't need a full animation if that's not something you know how to do, but maybe find some way to make it less abrupt?

It was also hard at times to distinguish objects from the background, like with the crowbar and gun. I would not have known they existed if I hadn't gotten frustrated and started clicking everywhere. Some of the arrows are unintuitive, too, especially the one going toward the door that the dog has to search. If it's pointing at the bottom of the screen, it looks like we'll be going backwards, not forwards. And the arrow at the pipe puzzle isn't immediately obvious. It could really stand to be more distinct.

The music is great, and really gives the feel of being in a tense, urgent situation. I liked the sound effects, too.

Unfortunately, the text you had really didn't work for me. I'm usually pretty forgiving about English errors, but there were quite a lot of them here. I think it would be a good idea to work with a proofreader next time, especially if English isn't your first language. Also, the tone was really inappropriate for the situation sometimes. Why does there need to be a smiley on the description for the stick? Why does the player character talk about how they've always dreamed of pressing the button, but have nothing to say about the piles of dead people lying around? And I realize the blood is useful, but most people are not going to react with "oh, how can I use it?" when looking at a puddle of human blood.

The descriptions for the stick and crowbar seem to be switched, too.

I like that you included a pipe puzzle. It's great to have things in escape games that break up the "find things and use them on other things" pattern. But the pipe puzzle doesn't provide much of a challenge- pipe puzzles in general are pretty easy, but there are only 6 tiles to rotate here, and 3 of those have obvious placements. I like solving pipe puzzles, so it was a little disappointing that it was over so fast. Maybe think about making the pipe puzzle a little tougher? Also, why not add a few more puzzles or minigames? It's okay to have just one, but (at least in my opinion) it's better to have more of them, with a range of things to do.

The ghosts and spider looked good, but as they were, they felt more like obstacles than threats. As far as I can tell, the ghosts killed all these people, yet you can stand around in front of them forever without anything bad happening to you. I'm not saying "kill the player for touching a ghost", but it's good to have your gameplay match up with your story. As long as there's enough time for the player to get away from the ghosts if they don't know how to fight them or don't have the right item yet, I think having the ghosts actually being a risk could have helped the game feel more cohesive. I don't really understand the spider, either. Why is there a giant spider? Is it some kind of supernatural creature? Use the spider if you want to- it's a very nice spider- but you need to make it belong in your setting.

And I felt really limited in my interactions with the boy and the dog. The boy appears to be the one other survivor of what happened at the subway, and I can't talk to him, or try to get him out, or anything besides putting a bandage on his leg and taking his dog. His face doesn't even change after his leg is bandaged. I understand if he's in shock and doesn't want to talk to me, but when the game doesn't let me even try to talk to him, it feels very off. He's an injured child surrounded by corpses and blood, any normal person is going to feel bad for him and want to help! And even though he's been bandaged, he's still injured. He's still going to have a harder time moving around on that leg. And I don't want to take away his dog! I understand borrowing the dog, but I felt really bad about taking it away permanently.

I guess the big problem I have with this game is that it feels like you didn't see how this would have to be a little different in tone from the kind of escape games you mostly see. This game isn't about exploring a nice, pleasant room, and solving the puzzles in it to get out. It's a survival situation. There are dead people and blood everywhere. Your protagonist acts like they're exploring a nice, pleasant room full of puzzles to solve, and that's really... not a good fit for the setting you've put them in. It doesn't mean that the game has to be grim and bleak! Most action movies with a focus on survival manage to be fun to watch, but the characters still react to threats differently than they'd react to happy exploration, and still (if they're good people) show concern for others who might be less able to fend for themselves.

When you have an invisible and/or silent protagonist, what that does is cause the player to fill in the blanks with "me" or "average human". The more you see the protagonist asserting their own personality, the more the protagonist becomes their own character. Silent/invisible protagonists have their place when the story lets them act like an average human in that situation would, but that means showing empathy for small, injured children, and not giggling over how much you want to press the button (except maybe in a nervous, gallows humor type way.) If that's what you're going for, I think you need to give the protagonist more opportunities to react in a human way to the horrible things they're seeing. Let the player click on the bodies and wreckage and see the protagonist emote about them. Let the player show concern for the boy, and maybe take him with us at the end.

If you want a protagonist that doesn't react in an average way, that's okay, too. Maybe you want the joke to be that they're treating a life or death situation like an escape game! That kind of thing can work, but you have to establish the protagonist as a separate person from the player. Maybe show what the protagonist looks like? Definitely let the player click on things, even things that aren't useful for the game, and show how the protagonist reacts to them. If you're going for the protagonist as their own unique character, you need to give them all the opportunities that fit to show who they are.

Remember, your game isn't the same as the other games out there that already exist. Different is good- if your game was the same as every other escape out there, why would you need to make it? But different also requires consideration. You need to think about what you're doing that veers off from the formula, and what other parts of the formula need to change along with it.

After finishing the wire puzzle, I could not get away. Did I miss anything? There were no arrows on the screen that I could see

The man hanging out from the window and the hand you could see on the left on the other page was the same person chasing me! I was looking forward to a zombie themed game so the ghosts and the spider did not impressed me much...

When at the wire puzzle, the down arrow only appears when my mouse cursor is at the exact right position.

if the dog was his pet, as it seemed, it has probably left to get help after doing that one task for the escaper.
Much better to leave him where he is, for the time being, safe, than drag him around heaven-knows-where into who-knows-what new danger.
The dog will be back for him.

The button for opening doors made me chuckle.
Most of us [who haven't been stuck waiting for train doors to open] would prefer to press the "go fast" button in a driver's cab.