Escape First

I'll be straight with you: Escape First is not the game I'd normally cover. No weapons, no TTK debates, no ranked ladder. But it landed on my desk, so here's the honest take from someone who cares more about whether things work than whether they're cozy. OnSkull's first entry in their escape room series ships with three rooms: Psycho Circus (a clown-themed trap that community feedback consistently calls the weakest of the bunch), The Red Button (a tighter, more atmospheric single-room mystery), and Lost In Time (a space-time chaos scenario that at least has a concept behind it). Each room carries a distinct vibe, and the variety in theme is probably the game's strongest card. Puzzle logic, though, is uneven. Some clues read clearly; others have that "why would I know that" quality that sends you hunting for a walkthrough. That inconsistency is the main thing dragging down its Steam rating into Mixed territory - sitting at roughly 65% positive across around 380 reviews. Not a disaster, but not a confident recommendation either. Where the game shows genuine personality is in its multiplayer structure. You can load up with up to six people in co-op, working the same room as a team, or flip into Versus mode where each player is locked alone in the room and races to escape first. That competitive angle is actually a smart idea for an escape room format, and it gives friend groups something to argue about afterward. The game also supports VR via SteamVR with HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, including full roomscale tracking, though the desktop mode with keyboard, mouse, or gamepad works fine if you're flatscreen. One community-reported caveat worth knowing: some users hit multiplayer lobby bugs where co-op partners couldn't enter the room with the host, so if you're buying this specifically for online co-op, go in with managed expectations on the netcode side. Content-wise, this is a short game. Three rooms means you're looking at a couple of hours before you've seen everything, assuming puzzles don't stump you for too long. Replayability is thin unless you use Versus mode to run the rooms competitively across multiple sittings. The series has grown considerably since this first entry - later installments and the well-received Escape First Alchemist suggest OnSkull learned from the feedback here - so if you're new to the franchise, jumping to a later entry might actually be the smarter move. As a series starting point, Escape First feels like the rough draft it is: ambitious enough in structure, shakier in execution than it should be at the puzzle level.

Fred · Scout Team

Shooters

Be the first to comment on Escape First.