onEscapee

According to the developers, onEscapee is a graphic action-adventure in the Flashback mould with a gameplay similar to Another World. The title is a combination of the two words one and escapee. One, because the hero is alone against the world, escapee, because he has escaped alien kidnappers. Gameplay is essentially an alternation of combat and puzzles, with the puzzles having some action elements too.

OnEscapee was created by a Hungarian team. Naturally, they wanted it to be as international as possible and therefore kept text and speech to a minimum. They could support over 17 languages this way, but it also earned them one of the few criticisms back in 1997: some puzzles would really have benefitted from some explanation.

When it arrived just in time for Christmas back in 1997, it was received enthusiastically by the Amiga community. It was generally deemed a worthy sequel to its declared model Flashback. One reviewer said some aspects reminded him of Myst, which had only just been ported to the Amiga, but it was more fun. It will be interesting to see how the Windows version fares more than seven years later. After all, a lot of time has flown. But the popularity of old games is growing, so it might well meet the spirit of the time.

Graphics have been redone in 640×480 hi-color, otherwise the game is unchanged. It is a 140MB (now 124MB) download; originally, to play it, you had to purchase a moderately priced activation key (yes, it was basically the same system as Windows XP). Later the game has became freeware, and the archive a bit smaller. There is no longer any mention of it on the Invictus Games website. A Macintosh port that was announced at some point seems never to have been finished.

Amiga Reviews

• A great game that is let down by some small problems, Amiga Nutta says, problems many may not notice or worry about:

  The puzzles element of the game is probably the most important and it is where it has it's only major problem. It's just too easy to die without any warning. a lot of the time things are left to trail and error a little too much, different people will have different views on this but I didn't really like it that much. Other then this the puzzles are nicely done, some are easy to solve while others will leave you sitting there for ages. There are also a few sub-games which pop-up now and then, these take place on a seperate screen, one example of them can be found on the second level where you have to connect three cables at the top and bottom of the screen by activating lights in a panel in-between, however, the connections are not allowed to intermix, believe me, it's not easy.

• OnEscapee is the Best Game Of 1997, a slightly annoyed reviewer on Amiga Flame ensures us:

  Unfortunately for me to provide you with a full review, I had to check out all the levels by using Saved Games sent to me for reviewing purposes — so I had it spoilt. But it is shocking to see how they have been able to create new enemies without having to repeat the same ones all the time which is seen in many other games, I think it brings you much excitement to see something new each time, you really don't know what to expect.

• onEscapee is a thrilling and atmospheric game, Eike M. Lang recommends it:

  To sum things up I can highly recommend onEscapee to anybody who is at least marginally interested in the genre. The intro and outro are done technically well (although not spectacular) and when you finish the game the course of events reaches a tragic dimension, but I will not spoil things for you by revealing what exactly happens. To me, onEscapee is one of the first true "next generation" Amiga games and I hope we will see many more titles that meet or exceed the quality set forth by this game.

• OnEscapee is quite a hard game to describe, Kristian Hesketh ponders, for detailed description may easily spoil, so he is sometimes a bit cryptic:

  The huge intro on the CD is also handdrawn (and good), so the whole game fits together seamlessly. Once the intro has finished and you get into the actual game itself, you must be quick on your feet. If you attempt to gaze at the surroundings you will be instantly attacked by the garbage disposal unit. It is a real shame that the start of the game is so difficult as it may very well put gamers off. The most awful puzzle of OnEscapee is the first one, because it shows a complete disregard for common sense. Every player of the game will naturally try to avoid the solution to the first problem. Stupid.