Don’t Escape: 4 Days In A Wasteland – Review (PC)

The post-apocalyptic world can be an extremely lonely time for a solitary survivor. The moments in between accepting that our thriving way of life has ceased and being murdered by roving gangs of Mad Max-esque maniacs are filled with aimless wandering a desolate moor. The latest point and click adventure title from indie veterans Scriptwelder and Armor Games, Don’t Escape: 4 Days In A Wasteland attempts to add value to those seemingly meaningless moments. This is a game where you’ll need to carefully plan out and expend your characters time wisely. And luckily, it’s worth your time as well.

Don’t Escape: 4 Days In A Wasteland simplifies the typical end of the world narrative. This isn’t a story where your character’s end goal is to find some long rumored oasis for survivors, or a lost family member, or anything really. The ultimate outcome is simply to survive.

The main antagonist in Don’t Escape is, at first, a lingering toxic fog that only seems to be a threat at night (other threats emerge, but we won’t spoil them for you here). Little is known about the luminous cloud of death, but story details are strewn throughout the world and can be uncovered at the players leisure. The game does a good job of coaxing you into discovering what exactly happened. You’ll want to know more about how this all came about, especially as a cracked and torn moon looms over the player in the opening screen. How did the moon become a wreck of its former self? What does this noxious gas have to do with it? Where is everyone and how long has the world been this way? These are all questions the player will want to have answered, and it will require taking the time to seek out story clues, paying close attention to nightmare sequences that plague our main character overnight, and surviving long enough to meet wasteland allies.

Actually playing the game is less about high octane action, and more about thinking and trial and error. As is generally the case with point and click adventures, the player will spend most of their time exploring different screens, picking up loose objects, and crafting new items to solve new problems. An item bag will only allow you to carry a designated weight of items, so you will need to pick and choose what you do and don’t bring along. Given that you’ll never know what will be needed to progress the story and protect your character, it’s a bit of a guessing game as what to take. Luckily, stashes can be found in safe areas or in vehicles that allow you to store items too large for your item bag. If you find you need something that you left behind, you can simply travel back to your stash and swap out items. This somewhat takes away from the challenge. Given that all of my items were at arms reach in the stash, I never really felt like I was sacrificing any of my items or making impactful choices with what to take.

Thankfully though, Don’t Escape skillfully weaves a timing mechanic into the game. Everything you do slowly eats away at the day time clock. You can use a hammer to salvage a dilapidated greenhouse, but it is going to cost you time. You can traverse down a dried up river bed in lieu of a broken bridge, but its going to cost you more time. You want to complete everything before night falls and the toxic fog moves in. This includes not only finding a safe place to hunker down while the fog moves through, but also ensuring you have sufficient defenses in place to combat the fog. This includes fortifying doors and windows, using irrigation systems to dilute the fog, and knowing what the best elevation is to be at based on the weight of the fog. It’s all very clever and the player will need to utilize different combinations of found items and figure out how they can best be used to protect yourself. Each night that passes produces a summary screen which shows the player how much of the fog has eaten away at their health, and where it penetrated their defenses. The game is forthright in telling you where you failed, or where could have done better. This is an interesting approach to ensuring success, but again, I couldn’t help but feel that the game was holding my hand a bit too much and making solutions too obvious.

The graphic style in Don’t Escape is a simple but charming pixel art world strewn with looming backdrops, and just enough detail in foreground objects. I was a bit concerned about playing a pixel art point and click game, however the developers have given objects that can be interacted with just enough character and vibrancy to ensure that you’re not missing anything. The load times between each screen are however quite noticeable. There are some areas that you will zoom through as you’ve already stripped it of useful objects, and the player will spend more time on a blank loading screen than an actual in game screen. It’s not immersion breaking but, again, very noticeable.

Music and sound are fantastic in Don’t Escape. The soundtrack does a great job of setting the tone of your somber yet urgent adventure. Sounds effects are surprisingly detailed as well – footsteps differ based on traversing over a gravely walkway, straw covered barn floor, or a gas station scattered with broken glass. Each item you pick up and interact with also comes with it’s own audible characteristic.

Recommendation: As a thinking gamer’s game, Don’t Escape: 4 Days In A Wasteland did what I wanted it to do. It made me use my brain and not fists to overcome challenges, had me utilize trial and error, and provided a surprisingly intriguing backdrop to do it all in. While the load times somewhat overstay their welcome, and the game makes things a bit too obvious and negates it’s own sense of challenge on occasion, I still had a good time with it and would easily recommend for anyone looking for a slower paced and methodical end of the world adventure.

Don’t Escape: 4 Days In A Wasteland launches on Steam on Monday March 11th, 2019.

Check out our Review Guide to see what we criteria we use to score games.

Don’t Escape: 4 Days In A Wasteland was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion.