Exit is an interesting take on the puzzle genre, but it is not as addictive as something like Tetris.
To best explain it, think of the puzzles that games like Zelda, God of War, or Resident Evil have you do. Pushing blocks, hitting switches, finding keys, and escorting companions are all little puzzles that would come up during your play through of pretty much every game. Exit takes all those puzzle moments and makes a full game out of it.
You are Mr. Escape, a master at finding an exit out of a building, and your job is to find people who are trapped in life threatening situations and get them to the exit point. The game plays in 2-D, where you will mostly be in a building or multi floored environment. Find any people who are trapped, and get them to safety. You go about doing this just like I mentioned above. When the mission starts, you can press select to get a general idea of where the people are located and where the exit point is. Then, it is just a matter of block pushing, switch flipping, wall climbing, and some multitasking to get the job done.
Once Mr. Esc tags a trapped person to get up and follow him, that person becomes a companion who does not just follow you wherever you go. In fact, the companions you rescue play a pivotal role in the game. There are three types of companions: child, young, and adult. Each has certain capabilities, while lacking others. Adults, for example are the only ones who can push really huge blocks. Not even Mr. Esc can do it. Children can crawl through really small tunnels, which once again, Mr. Esc cannot do. The analog nub acts as a computer mouse and is used to assign jobs to your companions while you go do something else. For example, you may be on one floor, trying to rescue someone, while your companion is standing on a switch two floors down just to keep an electronic door open. It’s a very basic example, and trust me when I say that it can get much more complicated than that. It is a puzzle game after all.
There are also many items throughout the game that add to theses puzzles. There are fire extinguishers, axe picks, keys, floor boards, and a few others. It is not always so obvious where or when to use the items, but everything does get used within each puzzle. Unfortunately, if you use it at the wrong time or for the wrong purpose, you won’t know. The game does not tell you if you dug yourself into a hole that you cannot get out of. You just have to restart on your own. At first, I though it was only for a couple of missions, but you can pretty much get stuck on every mission in the game, so if you do not see the solution unfolding, just restart.
Each mission is timed, but you have more than enough to stop and think them through. The main reason for the time is you get points for finishing each mission, and you get more with a better time. The points are used to unlock later levels in the game, speaking of which, there are 100 missions in the game. The visuals of Exit are stylistically interesting. The cel shaded look keeps all objects and characters models sharp, and the art style has a cartoon-like feel to it. The music and sound, on the other hand, are pretty bad. Each companion has about three lines, and they get old real fast, especially since you deal with them for 100 missions. The music always seems to sound the same, too. The 100 missions are broken up into tens, and there are only ten songs, one for each section. If there was a dramatic change in the music to go along with the change in settings, it would be fine, but there is nothing interesting in the music department. I found the animations and overall pacing of the on screen actions to be very slow. Is it supposed to show the calmness of Mr. Esc even when he is in perilous situations? There is such a thing as being calm and efficient at the same time. He walks very slowly, and even though you can make him run, he has to go into a full stopping motion before proceeding to walk or perform any other action. Climbing ladders is even worse, and your companions are just as slow as you are, sometimes even slower, depending on their type and the action being performed. Overall, the animations just feel slow and each animation must be fully performed before another can execute. It is not annoying for the first half, but you begin to wish that things would move along a little quicker later on.
When you combine the basic puzzle solving gameplay found in many games with more strategy in multitasking with your companions and having to do it all under a certain time limit, Exit is a pretty fun game. However, the gameplay is not as addictive as something like Tetris or Lumines, and even though it remained fun for me up to around the 60th level, it quickly dropped down and I forced myself to finish the last 20 missions. It definitely gets harder, and the progression from easy to difficult is very gradual and nicely paced. However, I just got bored doing the same things over and over, but with a little more complexity as the game progressed. Another problem I have with Exit is that there is no variation in the missions. Each mission begins with a quick caption of what you should do, but they all say the same thing. You have to either rescue all the companions or don’t leave any companions behind, or get all the companions to the exit. They all mean the same thing. Maybe if there was some change in what I have to do, the game would remain fresh up to the last mission. Give me a mission where I have to put out all of the fires in the building, drain out all the water from the basement, or melt all of the ice in the frozen hotel. Anything with a little something to mix up the gameplay is always welcome, especially when the gameplay is running thin towards the latter half
Exit is an interesting take on the puzzle genre, but it does not keep me coming back for more. I feel like you can be fine with just playing the first 50 missions. Exits works really well as a handheld game, and nothing more. It is very accessible, fast load times, and most missions can be done in less than 6 minutes. If you find it at a very cheap price, I would recommend checking it out. There are plenty of missions, and there are 100 more to download, so there is plenty of replay value here. However, all of the minor gripes I have with the game keep me from fully recommending it.