Up is the only way out.
ESCAPE is a 2011 infinite jumper made by Ian Brock, Josh Schonstal, and spamtron (Guerin McMurry) in Adobe Flash.
In the game, you play as a small creature who climbs from a laser while dodging electric spikes. It released for Web, Android and iOS, but the pages for the last two are no longer available.
You can still play the game here
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ESCAPE contains examples of:
- Always Night: Ingame, the time never changes from a night with stars in the sky.
- Advancing Wall of Doom: Once you jump from the bottom, a machine with a giant laser activates and chases you upwards endlessly.
- Building of Adventure: Barring the very beginning of a run, the entire game involves you wall-jumping up a tower.
- Cartoon Creature: The main character is a black, two-legged animal with purple sclera and big ears.
- Controllable Helplessness: You can jump high enough to trigger the sensor for the laser, but fall back down before it actually turns on. If you do, then it does not move — you're stuck under it and can only either stay in the same room forever or jump straight into the laser.
- Difficulty by Acceleration: The laser chasing you speeds up the farther you make it, forcing you to climb quicker or die.
- Dynamic Difficulty: As you climb farther up the tower, the laser accelerates and the strips of electric spikes increase in both size and quantity.
- No Kill like Overkill: The panels along the tower you're climbing have electric spikes, when "electric" or "spikes" could probably kill you individually.
- No Plot? No Problem!: It's never explained explicitly or implicitly who you're playing as, why they were trapped, or why they want to escape. The story starts and ends with you jumping up a tower.
- One-Hit Kill: Both sources of damage in the game kill you instantly on touch, whether it be electrocuting you to death or blasting you into nothing.
- Retraux: The game is made entirely in a pixel art style with no overtly modern special effects.
- Speed Echoes: You can build momentum off of a previous walljump with another one, which leaves a trail of copies behind you.
- Signpost Tutorial: Painted on the wall of the room you start in is a big Escape key with an arrow pointing upward, which is meant to tell you how to jump out.
- 20 Minutes into the Future: There's a giant laser that activates as soon as you start climbing — the rest of the game's architecture is in a traditional modern style with nothing far out of the ordinary, including the city with skyscrapers in the background.
- Wall Jump: Your only movement option in the game is to jump between two walls.